Humanities 101/ 103

PAINTING
PAINTING - the art of applying color, or other organic or synthetic substances, to various surfaces to create
a representational, imaginative or abstract picture or design.

Painting Mediums - refers to ink, pigment or color used onto the drawing surface.
Examples:
 solid - color pencil, crayon, pastel, chalk, charcoal
 liquid - tempera, oil, watercolor, gouache, paints
 technique – fresco (a durable method of painting on a wall by using watercolors on wet
plaster.)

TOPICS in PAINTING

LANDSCAPE PAINTING
 The art of depicting natural scenery.
 A landscape comprises several principal categories in terms of elements:
o Landforms and waterforms
o Vegetation
o Animal life
o Human-built structural elements – human made artistic representations
o Depth and breadth in terms of view
o Direction of lighting
o Weather forms

GENRE PAINTING
 Topic concentrated with the realistic depiction of scenes from everyday life.
 It deals with ordinary life, including family life, sports, street scenes, picnics and festivals.

PORTRAITURE
 The focus is representational art focusing on particular individual subjects.
 Artists sometimes intentionally alter the subject’s appearance by embellishing or refining their
images to emphasize or minimize particular qualities (physical, psychological or social) of the individuals
portrayed.
 When the artist creates a portrait of himself, it is called self-portrait.

STILL LIFE
 Subject composed of inanimate objects. – fruits, cut flowers, plates, things, etc.
 ART MOVEMENTS IN PAINTING

ART MOVEMENT
 It refers to the tendency or style in the arts with a specific, common philosophy or goal, followed by
a group of artists during a restricted period of time (usually a few months, years or decades).
 There were art movements in painting (dominant), sculpture, architecture and music.
 Art Movements have almost entirely disappeared in contemporary art, where individualism and
diversity prevails.

ART MOVEMENTS IN PAINTING

RENAISSANCE ART (1400 – 1600)
RENAISSANCE
ART 1400-1600
characteristics:  The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the
17th century, beginning in Florence (Italy) in the Late Middle Ages and later
spreading to the rest of Europe (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany,
England, Poland).
 It is considered as the first art movement.
Developments
 Linear and aerial perspective was developed.
 Painters developed technique in studying light and shadow.
 Oil as a painting medium was first used (Northern Renaissance painters).
 Revival of the classical forms (art of the Greeks and Romans).

painters  Sandro Botticelli, Italian

 Leonardo da Vinci, Italian
 Raphael , painter and architect, Italian
 Michelangelo Buonarroti , sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, Italian
 Titian, Italian
 Albrecht Dürer, German
 Jan van Eyck, Flemish
 Masaccio, Italian

BAROQUE ART (1600 – 1750)

BAROQUE  Baroque style used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to
ART
1600-1750 produce tension, exuberance and grandeur.
characteristics  It is characterized by a sense of movement, energy, tension and strong contrasts
of light and shadow which enhances the dramatic effects of the art.
painters  Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Italian
 Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn , Dutch
 Pieter Pauwel (Peter Paul) Rubens, painter, Flemish
 Artemisia Gentileschi, Italian

ROMANTICISM (1790 – 1880)

ROMANTICISM  Generally characterized by a highly imaginative and subjective approach,

(1790 –1880
Characteristics emotional intensity, nostalgic and a dream-like or visionary quality.

painters  Eugene Delacroix, French

 Jean Louis Andre Gericault, French
 Caspar David Friedrich, German
 Joseph Mallord William Turner, English
 Francisco de Goya, Spanish

IMPRESSIONISM (1863 – 1890)

IMPRESSIONISM  The name of this movement came from Monet’s “Impression Sunrise”.
(1863 – 1890
 Impressionists paintings are characterized by:
characteristics
o visible brushstrokes
o unmixed and untinted light colors
o emphasis on light in its changing qualities
o ordinary subject matters
o unusual visual angles
o dominant colors are the primary colors – red, yellow and blue –
complementary colors – green, purple and orange.

painters  Edouard Manet, French

 Claude Oscar Monet, French
 James Abbott McNeill Whistler, American – born, British-based
 Pierre Auguste Renoir,French
 Edgar Degas, French

POST IMPRESSIONISM (1880 and 1905)

POST
IMPRESSIONIS  Post-impressionists continued using vivid colours, thick application of paint,
M (1880 and
distinctive brushstrokes and real-life subject matter, but they aimed to portray
1905
characteristics more emotion and expression in their paintings.

painters  Paul Cézanne, French

 Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin, French
 Rousseau, Henri Julien Félix Rosseau, French
 Vincent Willem van Gogh, Dutch

EXPRESSIONISM (1905 – 1930)

characteristics  The paintings aim to reflect the artist’s state of mind rather than the reality of
the external world.
 To achieve these ends, the subject is frequently caricatured, exaggerated,
distorted, or otherwise altered in order to stress the emotional experience in its
most intense and concentrated form.

painters
 Emile Nolde, German
 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German
 Wassily Kandinsky, Russian
 Edvard Munch, Norwegian

CUBISM (1907 – 1914)

characteristics  Subjects are broken up, analyzed and reassembled in an abstracted form –
instead of rendering objects from a single fixed angle , the artist divide them into
multiple facets so several different aspects are seen simultaneously.
2 types of Cubism
 Analytical Cubism (c. 1910) – painting geometric shapes in particular
the cube and the cone or the basic planes and colors used mainly restrained
grays, browns, greens and yellows and in monochrome.
 Synthetic Cubism (c. 1912) – abstract composition by juxtaposition (a
synthesis of geometric shapes

painters  Pablo Picasso, Spanish

 Georges Braque, French
 Fernand Leger, French
SURREALISM (1926 – present)

characteristics  Characteristics of this style: a combination of the depictive, the abstract, and
the psychological, came to stand for the alienation which many people felt in
the modern period, combined with the sense of reaching more deeply into the
psyche, to be "made whole with ones individuality".

painters  Salvador Dali, Spanish

 René François Ghislain Magritte, Belgian
 Joan Miro, Spanish

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM (since 1940 - present)

characteristics  The first American (US) movement to achieve worldwide influence.

 They used diverse styles that plays with color and form with a
nonrepresentational work focusing on surface qualities of the brushstrokes and
texture and the use of huge canvases.
 2 major tendencies in Abstract Expressionism
o Action Painting – concerned with paint texture and consistency and
gestures of the artists.
o Color-fielding – used unified color and shape.

painters  Williem Dekooning, American

 Helen Frankenthaler, American
 Robert Motherwell, American
 Jackson Pollock, American
 Mark Rothko, American

POP ART (1950s- 1960s)

characteristics  Image of “Popular Art” were taken from mass culture.

 Some artists duplicated beer bottles, soup cans, comic strips, road signs and
similar objects in paintings, collages and sculpture.
 This movement made a huge impact on commercial, graphic and fashion
design.
 painters  Roy Liechtenstein, American
 Andy Warhol, American

SCULPTURE
 Latin, sculpere, “to carve”
 It is the art of creating representational or abstract shapes, either in the round as
free-standing sculpture or in relief sculpture.
 2 types of sculpture
o Freestanding sculptures (sculpture in the round) – can be viewed from all
sides.
o Relief (sculpture in relief) –sculpted from a flat background plane.
 High relief – image stands out relatively far from the background plane.
 Low relief (bas relief) – surface of the image is closer to the background
plane.
 Sunken Relief – image is cut into the background plane.

SCULPTURE TECHNIQUES
 Sculpture can be made from almost any organic or inorganic substance.
 Technique in sculpture depends on the material that will be used.

CARVING
 Carving is a technique by removing material or cutting away parts of the material to
create a desired shape.
 The material is usually hard and frequently weighty; generally, the design is
compact and is governed by the nature of the material.
 Materials: stones (semi- precious), rocks (limestone, granite, marble, sandstone)
ivory, jade, bones, ice, soap, bones and others.

MODELING
 Modelling consists of addition to or building up of form wherein pliable materials are
shaped.
 The materials used are soft and yielding and can be easily shaped, enabling rapid
execution.
 Materials : clay, wax, thin sheet of metal, papier mache, plaster of Paris, others

CASTING
 The making of a solid object by pouring molten material into a mould and allowing it
to cool.
 Materials : liquid form of metal , glass, plastic, wax

CONSTRUCTION AND ASSEMBLAGE

 Process of combining and joining various materials to form sculptures.
 Although traditional techniques are still employed, much 20th-century sculpture is
created by construction and assemblage.
 Assemblage is putting together, assemble or arrange objects to form a three-
dimensional image.
 Materials: found objects, ready made objects

ARCHITECTURE
 Architecture is a branch of the visual arts that combine practical function and
artistic expression.
 It is the art and science of designing and constructing buildings especially habitable
ones.
 In a wider definition, architecture would include the environment, from the
macrolevel (town planning, urban design and landscape) to the microlevel
(furnitures).

CONSIDERATIONS IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

 Site – location of the building.
 Materials – availability and durability of materials influence the design of buildings.
 Culture and Tradition of the Society
 Restrictions – awareness of loads and stresses that certain parts of the building
must bear.
 Law – designs in accordance with existing laws.
 Environment – consideration of the natural environment like climate and geology.
 Maintenance – awareness of how to take care of buildings.
 Function – purpose of the building which include physical security, religious purpose
for public or private use or used as homes or workplace.
 Aesthetics/ beauty

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY
 Architectural history studies the evolution and history of architecture across the
world through a consideration of various influences – artistic, socio-cultural,
political, economic and technological.

Egyptian Architecture
 Architectural structures : pyramids, temples, palaces

Greek Architecture
 Architectural structures : temples, theaters
 Orders in Greek Architecture – Doric, Ionic and Corinthian – elaboration of post
and lintel system.

Roman Architecture
 Architectural structures : temples, arches, amphitheater (Colosseum),
aquaducts,
 Designed the system of arches, domes and vaults
 The Romans used “concrete” in most of their construction.

Gothic Architecture
  Gothic architectural style emphasizes verticality and features almost skeletal
stone structures with great expanses of glass, sharply pointed spires, cluster
columns, flying buttresses, ribbed vaults, pointed arches and inventive
sculptural details.
 Characteristics of Gothic architecture:
 Rib vaults
 Flying buttresses
 Pointed arches
 Stained glass windows

SKYSCRAPERS
 A skyscraper is a very tall, slender multi-storey building that, typically, and
either singly or in groups, dominates the urban skyline, and towers above
other buildings.
 Skyscrapers differ structurally from other buildings: whereas conventional
buildings have load-bearing walls, skyscrapers consist of an iron or steel
frame, to which non-load-bearing (and therefore thin, light) walls are
attached.

MUSIC
Music is defined as:
 Sounds and pitches organized in time to create a chosen artistic or aesthetic statement.
 An artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in
a structured and continuous manner.
 Any agreeable pleasing and harmonious sounds.

ELEMENTS OF MUSIC
Tone
 Sound results from vibrations in the atmosphere.
 If the vibrations are irregular, they produce noise; if regular, it produces tones.
 A tone has four characteristics:
Pitch
 Organization of pitches with a pattern of intervals between creates scales.
Dynamics
 Refers to the loudness or softness according to the amplitude, or width, of its
vibration.
  Dynamics can change suddenly or gradually (crescendo, getting louder or
decrescendo, getting softer).
Timbre
 Sound quality or tone color, timbre is the characteristic that allows us to distinguish
between one instrument and another and the difference between vowel sounds.
 Terms we might use to describe timbre: bright, dark, brassy, reedy, harsh, noisy, thin,
buzzy, pure, raspy shrill, mellow, strained.
Duration
 Length of one tone to another tone.

Melody (or musical line)

 A melody is a meaningful series of tones that has emotional significance.
 Sometimes a melody is considered to be the theme of composition.

Rhythm and meter

 Refers to the time element of music.
 A specific rhythm is specific pattern in time; we usually here there in relation to a steady
pulse and mentally organize this pulse or tempo into meter (sometimes called a time
signature).
 Meter organizes beats into groups, usually of two or three; beats can be divided into small
units usually 2, 3 or 4 subdivisions.

Texture
 Combination or arrangement of instruments or voices.
 Variations:
 monophonic - one voice or line.
 polyphonic – many voices, usually similar
 homophonic – 1. a melody with simple accompaniment; 2. chords moving in the same
rhythms (homorhythmic).
 heterophony – “mixed” or multiple similar versions of a melody performed
simultaneously
 collage – juxtaposition and superimposition of extremely different textures or sounds.

PERFORMING MEDIA : MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Musical Instruments - refers to the mechanisms that produce mechanical sounds.

CATEGORIES/TYPES OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

 Types of musical instruments are based on how they produce sounds.

STRINGED INSTRUMENTS (chordophones) – Greek “chordos” meaning “string” +

“phonos” meaning “sound”
 Instruments whose sounds are produced by vibrating a stretched string through bowing,
plucking, or striking.

WIND INSTRUMENTS (or aerophones) - Greek “aeros” meaning “air”

 Classified by the way an enclosed column of air is made to vibrate in which the musician
blows in one end and the music comes out of the other end.
 Divided into:
 Brass Instruments – produce sounds by blowing into a cup or funnel shaped
mouthpiece.
 Woodwind Instruments - produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp
edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator (usually a column of air) to
vibrate. Most of these instruments are made of wood, but can be made of other
materials, such as metals or plastics.
PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS (a.k.a idiophones and membraphones)
 Largest category.
 A percussion instrument’s sound is made by vibrating, once hit or shaken.
 Divided into:
 Idiophones (Greek “idios” meaning “self”)- struck or shaken and produce sounds
through the vibration of their entire body
 Membranophones (Latin “membranum” meaning “skin”)- Instruments with stretched
membrane from which when struck produces sound.

KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS
 Any instruments that are played with a musical keyboard, where every key generates one
or more sounds like piano, organ and harpsichord.

ELECTRONIC INSTRUMENTS
 Instruments produce or amplify sound through electronic means.
 Amplified instruments includes electric piano, organ and guitar
 Electronic instruments includes tape studios, synthesizers(systems of electronic
components that generate, modify and control sounds), computers and various hybrid
technologies

HUMAN VOICE
 The singer becomes an instrument with a unique ability to fuse words and musical tone.
 Methods and styles of singing vary from culture to culture and even within a culture.

CINEMA

Related terms: film, movie, motion picture, moving pictures, big screen, silver screen
 CINEMA - from French “cinema”, short of “cinematographe’, from Greek “kinema’ meaning
movement.
 FILM – term from the photographic film as the primary medium for recording and displaying
of movies.
 MOTION PICTURE, MOVING PICTURE, MOVIE – illusion of movement
 BIG SCREEN – the projection screen where the movie is traditionally shown.
 SILVER SCREEN – (old term) a white or silvered surface where pictures can be projected for
viewing before color was introduced.

DEFINITIONS
 A sequence of photographs projected onto a screen with sufficient rapidity as to create the
illusion of motion and continuity.
 A form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images giving the
illusion of continuous movement.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES INVOLVED IN CINEMATIC MOTIONS

 Critical Flicker Fusion – ability of the human eye to disregard the gaps between frames
when the movie is shown.
o The smoothly moving picture you see consists of thousands of slightly different still
images (called frames) projected in rapid succession.
o Each frame flashing is accompanied by burst of blackness.
o This phenomenon
o Critical flicker fusion ignores the gaps and sees the continuous light.

 Apparent Motion – an optical illusion of motion produced by viewing succession of still

pictures of moving object giving it an illusion of movement.

 Persistence of Vision – the phenomenon where the retina retained an image for a brief
split-second after the image was actually seen, and lends itself to animation (movement) by
fostering the illusion of motion when we view images in closely-timed sequence to one
another.
TECHNOLOGY LEADING TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOTION PICTURE
The start of motion pictures has been attributed to the following inventions:
 Motion picture camera (cine-camera) – developed in the 1880s (photographic camera
developed in 1839) with the ability to capture individual component images and stored on
a single reel.
o Thomas Edison also developed a type of motion picture camera in 1891 that
captures images 4x faster.
o First motion picture camera captures 16 frames per second then improved to
24 frames per second.
 Filmstock/film – consists of transparent celluloid, polyester or other plastic base first
developed in 1869 and further improved by George Eastman. Film width varies in size e.g.
35 mm for movie theatres, 16 mm for television, 8 mm for amateur video.
o As of 2005, worldwide, most major motion pictures are still recorded on film.
o A 2-hour movie takes up over 2 miles of film
 Motion picture projector/film Projector – a device that shine light through the
processed and printed film and magnify the “moving picture shows ” onto a screen for an
entire audience.
o The projector projects the same speed as that of the motion picture camera.

BEGINNING & DEVELOPMENT OF MOTION PICTURES

DEVELOPMENT OF MOTION PICTURE
 1895 – Auguste and Louis Lumiere “cinematographe”, both photograph and projected
film.
 First film – 3-4 minutes – shown with live music (piano or organ)
 Sound – 1927 – from “silent films”, motion pictures became “talking pictures ”
 Color –mid 1960s - from “black and white” to the incorporation of colors.
 Foreign language films can be appreciated through:
o Subtitles – a printed translation of the dialogue in a foreign language film,
usually appearing at the bottom of the screen.
o Dubbing – process of providing a dialogue in a different language but
synchronized as closely as possible with the actor ’s lips.

BEGINNING & DEVELOPMENT OF PHILIPPINE CINEMA

 http://www.aenet.org/family/filmhistory.htm - introduction to conclusion
 http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Independent-Film-Road-Movies/Philippines-
CONTEMPORARY-FILM.html - contemporary film

CURRENT ISSUES IN MOTION PICTURES (PHILIPPINES AND HOLLYWOOD)

 http://hubpages.com/hub/Contending-the-Present-Issues-of-the-Film-Industry-in-the-
Philippines - Contending the Present Issues of the Film Industry in the Philippines
 http://www.cinemaspy.com/Hollywood-Bokeh/Anatomy-of-a-Movie-Ten-Emerging-Trends-
Driving-Hollywood-Films/4163?q=Hollywood-Bokeh%2FAnatomy-of-a-Movie-Ten-Emerging-
Trends-Driving-Hollywood-Films%2F4163&p=1 - Anatomy of a Movie

INDEPENDENT FILM (“INDIE FILM”)

 An independent film (or “indie film”) is a film produced without financing or
distribution from a major movie studio.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_film

FILM GENRES
Genre - A a categorization of certain types of art based upon their style, form, or content. Most of
movies can easily be described with certain umbrella terms, such as Western, dramas, or
comedies. Of course, some films can't be described using such terminus, so realize that these are
generalizations.

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Note:

This is only a handout. Do not limit yourself in studying this handout. Further
research should be made for better understanding.