INTRODUCTION TO ARTS AND ITS ASSUMPTIONS

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What is art?
● Art is perennially around us.
● Plato had the sharpest foresight when he discussed in the symposium that:
“Beauty, the object of any love, truly progresses. As one moves through life, one locates
better, more beautiful objects of desire.”
Art
● Art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in
a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily
for their beauty or emotional power.
● The arts, also called fine arts, are modes of expression that use skill or imagination in the
creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.
Art
● Art comes from the ancient Latin, Ars which means craft or specialized form of skill, like
carpentry, smithying, or surgery.
● Ars in Medieval Latin came to mean something different. It meant “any special form of
book-learning, such as grammar or Logic, magic or astrology”.
● “The Humanities constitute one of the oldest and most important means of expression
developed by man”

Art Is Universal

● Art has always been timeless and universal, spanning generations and continents through
and through.
● An “…art is not good because it is old, but old because it is good”
● The works of Jose Rizal and Francisco Balagtas are not being read because they are old
but because they are good.

Art is not Nature

● Art is man’s expression of his reception of nature.
 ● Art is man’s way of interpreting nature.
● Art is made by man, whereas nature is a given around us.

Art involves experience

● Art is just an experience. By experience we mean “actual doing of something”
● Art depends on experience, and if one is to know art, he must know it as fact or
information but as experience.

ART APPRECIATION

Is this Art? YES

Is this Art? NO

Is this Art? YES

Is this Art? YES

Is This Art? NO

“It takes an artist to make art”

ROLE OF CREATIVITY IN ART MAKING

Creativity

● Creativity is what sets apart one artwork from another.

● A creative artist does not simply copy or imitate another artist’s work.
● He embraces originality, puts his own flavor into his work, and calls it his own creative
piece.
Being creative nowadays can be quite challenging.

What you thought was your own unique and creative idea may not be what it seems after
extensive research and that someone else has coincidentally devised the idea before in another
part of the world.

“Art as a Product of Imagination, Imagination as a Product of Art”

Imagination
● German physicist Albert Einstein who had made significant and major contributions in
science and humanity demonstrated that knowledge is actually derived from imagination.
● He emphasized this idea through his words:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know
and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know
and understand”
● Through imagination, one is able to craft something bold, something new, and something
better in the hopes of creating something that will change something.
● It allows endless possibilities.
● An artwork does not need to be a real thing but can be something that is imaginary.
● Take for example a musician who thinks of a tune in his head. The making of this tune in
his head makes it an imaginary tune, an imaginative creation, an imaginary art.
● It will remain imaginary until he hums, sings, or writes down the notes of the tune on
paper.
● However, something imaginary does not necessarily mean it cannot be called art.
● Artists use their imagination that gives birth to reality through creation.
“Art also inspires imagination”

ART AS AN EXPRESSION

● There may have been times when you felt something is going on within you, you try to
explain it but you do not know how.
● You try to release yourself from this tormenting and disabling state by doing something,
which is called expressing oneself (Collingwood, 1938)
● An emotion will remain unknown to a man until he expresses it.
Robin George Collingwood, an English philosopher who is best known for his work in aesthetic,
explicated in his publication The Principle of Art that:

“What an artist does to an emotion is not to induce it but express it”

There’s no specific technique in expression. This makes people’s art not a reflection of what is
outside or external to them, but a reflection of their inner selves.

TYPES OF ART

Visual Arts
• Appeals to the sense of sight and are mainly visual in nature.

• Visual arts is the kind of art form that the population is most likely more exposed to, but its
variations are so diverse – they range from sculptures that you see in art galleries to the last
movie you saw.

• Some mediums of visual arts include paintings, drawings, letterings, printing, sculptures,
digital imaging, and more.

Film
● Film refers to the art of putting together successions of still images in order to create an
illusion of movement.
● Film making focuses on its aesthetic, cultural, and social value and is considered as both
an art and an industry.
● Films can be created by using one or a combination of some or all of these techniques:
motion – picture camera (also known as movie camera), animation techniques, Computer
– Generated Imagery (CGI), and more.
 ● The art of filmmaking is so complex it has to take into account many important elements
such as lighting, musical store, visual effects, direction, and more.

Performance Art

● Performance art it's a live art and the artist's medium is mainly the human body which he
or she uses to perform, but also employs other kinds of art such as visual art, props, and
sound.
● It usually consists of four important elements:
- Time
- where the performance took place
- the performers or performer’s body
- and the relationship between the audience and the performer

Poetry Performance
• Poetry is an art form where the artist expresses his emotions not by using paint, charcoal, or
camera, but expresses them through words.

• These words are carefully selected to exhibit clarity and beauty and to stimulate strong
emotions of joy, anger, love, sorrow, and the list goes on.

• These words, combined with movements, tone, volume, and intensity of the delivery, add to
the artistic value of the poem.
 Architecture
• Architecture is the making of beautiful buildings.

• Not all buildings can be considered architecture.

• Buildings should embody these three important elements - plan, construction, and design - if
they wish to marry the title architecture.

Dance

• Dance is a series of movements that follows the rhythm of the music accompaniment.

• Dancing is a creative form that allows people to freely express themselves.

• It has no rules.

Literary Arts
literary arts ● Artists who practice literary arts use words - not paint, musical instruments, or chisels - to
express themselves and communicate emotions to the readers.
● Literary art goes beyond the usual professional, academic, journalistic , and other
technical forms of writing.
● It focuses on writing using a unique style, not following a specific format or norm.
● It may include both fiction and nonfiction such as novels, biographies, and poems.
Theater

● Theater uses live performers to present accounts or imaginary events before a live
audience.
● Much like in filmmaking, theater also considers several elements such as acting, gesture,
lighting, sound effects, musical score, scenery, and props.
● Some genres of theater include drama, musical, tragedy, comedy, and improvisation.

Applied Arts
• Applied arts is incorporating elements of style and design to everyday items with the aim of
increasing their aesthetic value.

• Artists in this field bring beauty, charm and comfort to many things that are useful in
everyday life.

• Industrial design, interior design, fashion design, and graphic design are considered applied
arts.
FUNCTIONS AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ART

Aristotle claimed that every particular substance in the world has an end, or telos in Greek,
which translates into “purpose.”

Every substance, defined as formed matter, moves according to a fixed path towards its aim.
This telos, according to Aristotle, is intricately linked with function.

For a thing to reach its purpose, it also has to fulfill its function.
FUNCTIONS OF ART
● An inquiry on the function of art is an inquiry on what art is for.
Example: What is the Rizal monument for?
● When it comes to function, different art forms come with distinctive functions.
● Some art forms are more functional than others.

Architecture and Applied Arts

● The value of the art in question lies in the practical benefits one gains from it
● Obviously made for a specific purpose.
Painting and Literature

● One can look at the value of the product of art in and for itself.

DOES IT MEAN THAT PAINTINGS AND LITERARY WORKS CAN NEVER HAVE
ANY FUNCTION?

● Dr. Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo

● The novels accrued value and as a consequence, function.
● They are functional in so far as they are designed to accomplish some definite end.

PERSONAL FUNCTIONS OF ART

● The personal functions of art are varied and highly subjective.

● Functions depend on the artist who created the art.
● An artist may create an art out of self- expression, entertainment, or therapeutic
purpose.
SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF ART
● Art is considered to have a social function if and when it addresses a particular collective
interest as opposed to a personal interest.
● Art may convey a message of protest, contestation, or whatever message the
artist intends his work to carry.
● Political art is a very common example of an art with a social function.
● Art can also depict social conditions such as photography
(pictures of poverty)
 ● Performance art like plays or satires can also rouse emotions and rally people
toward a particular end.

PHYSICAL FUNCTION OF ART

● The physical functions of art can be found in artworks that are crafted in order to serve
some physical purpose.
● Architecture, jewelry-making, interior design all serve physical functions.

OTHER FUNCTIONS OF ART

● Music was principally used for dance and religion.
● The ancient world saw music as an instrument to facilitate worship and invocation to
gods.
● Music was essential for the synchronization of dancers.
● Music guarantees that warriors were simultaneous.
● Today, music has expanded its functions and coverage.
● There is a lot of music that has no connection to dance or religion.
● Example: Serenade – People compose hymns to express feelings and emotions.
● Music is also used as accompaniment to stage plays and motion pictures
● Sculptures have been made by man most particularly for religion.
● In the Roman Catholic world, the employment of sculptures for religious purposes has
remained vital, relevant, and symbolic
● Rizal and Bonifacio’s monument and commemorative coins
(Pope Francis)
● Architecture may be the most prominent functional art.
● Unlike other forms of art, buildings take so much time to erect and destroy.
● One cannot dismiss taking into consideration the function of a building before
construction.
● It is also in architecture where one can find the intimate connection of function and form.
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ART

ART AS AN IMITATION

• In Plato’s The Republic, paints a picture of artists as imitators and art as mere imitation.

• In his description of the ideal republic, Plato advises against the inclusion of art as a
subject in the curriculum and the banning of artists in the Republic.
• In Plato’s metaphysics or view of reality, the things in this world are only copies of the
original, the eternal, and the true entities that can only be found in the World of Forms.
• For example, the chair that one sits on is not a real chair. It is an imperfect copy of the
perfect “chair” in the World of Forms.

● Plato was convinced that artists merely reinforce the belief in copies and discourage men
to reach for the real entities in the World of Forms.
● Plato was deeply suspicious of arts and artists for two reasons:
○ They appeal to the emotion rather to the rational faculty of men
○ They imitate rather than lead one to reality
● Poetry rouses emotions and feelings and thus clouds rationality of people.

● Art is just an imitation of imitation. A painting is just an imitation of nature, which is

also just an imitation of reality in the World of Forms.
● Art then is to be banished, alongside the practitioners, so that the attitudes and actions of
the members of the Republic will not be corrupted by the influence of the arts.

● For Plato, art is dangerous because it provides a petty replacement for the
real entities that can only be attained through reason.

ART AS A REPRESENTATION

● Aristotle agreed with Plato that art is a form of imitation.

● However, Aristotle considered art as an aid to philosophy in revealing the truth.
● The kind of imitation that art does is not antithetical to the reaching of fundamental truths
in the world.
● Unlike Plato who thought that art is an imitation of another imitation, Aristotle
 conceived of art as representing possible versions of reality.
● For Aristotle, all kinds of art do not aim to represent reality as it is, it endeavors to
provide a version of what might be or the myriad possibilities of reality.
● In Aristotelian worldview, art serves two particular purposes:

○ Art allows for the experience of pleasure (horrible experience can be made an
object of humor)
○ Art also has an ability to be instructive and teach its audience things about life
(cognitive)

ART AS A DISINTERESTED JUDGMENT

● Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Judgment, considered the judgment of beauty,

the cornerstone of art, as something that can be universal despite its subjectivity.
● Kant recognized that judgment of beauty is subjective.
● However, even subjective judgments are based on some universal criterion for the said
judgment.

HOW AND IN WHAT SENSE CAN A JUDGMENT OF BEAUTY, WHICH ORDINARILY

IS CONSIDERED TO BE A SUBJECTIVE FEELING, BE CONSIDERED OBJECTIVE OR
UNIVERSAL?

HOW ARE THESE TWO STATEMENTS DIFFERENT?

1. “I like this painting.”

2. “This painting is beautiful.”

• The first is clearly a judgment of taste (subjective), while the second is an aesthetic
judgment (objective).
• Making an aesthetic judgment requires us to be disinterested. In other words, we should try
to go beyond our individual tastes and preferences so that we can appreciate art from a
universal standpoint.

ART AS A COMMUNICATION OF EMOTION

● According to Leo Tolstoy, art plays a huge role in communication to its audience’s
 emotions that the artist previously experienced.
● In the same way that language communicates information to other people, art
communicates emotions.
● As a purveyor of man’s innermost feelings and thoughts, art is given a unique
opportunity to serve as a mechanism for social unity.
● Art is central to man’s existence because it makes accessible the feelings and
emotions of people from the past and present.