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• Art is a set of aspects that makes something worthy of appreciation.
• It involves the use of skills and creative imagination, especially in the production of aesthetic objects.

Assumptions of Art

• Art is instinctual, humans create it as a response to basic instincts like seeking balance, harmony, rhythm, and the desire to experience mystery
• Art expresses human imagination, communicates with others, and serves ritualistic and symbolic functions.
• Art is motivational and used to communicate ideas or emotions, reflecting the desire for pleasure and entertainment.
• Art can confront change, transgression, subversion, and even anarchy.
• Propaganda and commercialism can motivate art.
• Art possesses selective value by enhancing the survival of a species.
• Art comprises a broad general phenomenon experienced by its creator and is a collection of human experiences.
• Art manifests itself in human societies, even if they don't demonstrate it.
• Experiencing art is a duality, which means making art and recognizing/responding to it are distinct experiences.

Nature of Art

• Imagination is the ability to form images and ideas about things never seen or experienced, it is an underlying factor in creating knowledge.

Aspects of Imagination

• Imagination helps develop the ability to think of something that does not currently exist but may be developed.
• Imagination helps develop mental images.
• Imagination explains events or activities by providing reasons rather than causes.
• Imagination fosters the ability to create work that explains human life and how to advance it.

Is Imagination Creativity as Well?

• Imagination and creativity are not necessarily interconnected.
• Imagination is free thinking, creativity responds to a problem with existing tools and knowledge.

Aesthetics of Art

• Aesthetics revolve around principles and sensory experiences that make art emotionally and intellectually impactful.
• Aesthetics encompass beauty, expression, meaning, and how art interacts with the observer.

Key Dimensions of Aesthetics of Art

• Beauty: Art is pleasing due to harmonious colors, shapes, or patterns.
• Emotion: Art evokes feelings like happiness, sadness, wonder, or confusion.
• Expression: Art shares ideas, thoughts, or feelings non-verbally.
• Balance: Well-arranged art feels "right."
• Creativity: Art shows novelty, surprises, and inspires.
• Connection: Art creates a personal link by reminding or telling a story.
• Simplicity: Art can be beautiful or interesting without deep meaning.

What is Art?

• Art is a product of creativity, imagination, and expression.
• Artworks draw inspiration from nature or other artworks but artists create original forms using their perception and imagination.

Popular Art Expressions

• Visual Arts: These appeal to sight and are often visual in nature.
• Visual arts include paintings, drawings, letterings, printing, sculptures, and digital imaging.
• Film refers to putting together still images to create the illusion of movement.
• Techniques for film include motion-picture cameras, animation, and computer-generated imagery.
• Performance Art is live, with the artist's body as the primary medium along with other kinds of art.
• It consists of time, setting, the performer's body, and the performer-audience relationship.
• Poetry Performance is where the artist expresses emotions through carefully chosen words to stimulate strong feelings.
• Architecture involves making beautiful buildings, that should embody plan, construction, and design.
• Dance is a series of movements following music rhythm.
• In dance, performers are free to create and invent movements rather than confined to rules and steps, as long as they appear graceful and beautiful.
• Literary Art focuses on writing with a unique style, not following norms.
• Literary Art includes fiction and non-fiction like novels, biographies, and poems.
• Theater uses live performers to present accounts or imaginary events before a live audience.
• Similar to filmmaking, theater considers acting, gesture, lighting, sound effects, musical score, scenery, and props.
• Applied Arts incorporate style and design into everyday items to increase aesthetic value.
• Exploration, expression, needs, materials, and techniques combine functionality and style in applied arts.
• Applied arts includes interior, industrial, fashion, and graphic design.

Functions of Art

• Art has purposes referred to as functions, but cannot be strictly assigned a function outside of its proper context.
• All art is functional in some way, with reasons that make up these functions.
• Ideally, one can accurately guess an artwork's origin, time period, and artist.
• Factors like time period, location, and cultural influences should be considered before assigning functions to art.
• Misunderstanding and misinterpreting an artist's intentions can be the result of a lack of context.

Functions of Art (Categories)

• Physical: Artwork created to perform some service.
• Social: Art addresses aspects of life.
• Personal: Artists create artwork for self-expression or gratification Artists create artwork to communicate certain points or provide aesthetic experience
• Aesthetic Pleasure: "The value of arts lies in the pleasure that humans derive from them" (Graham (2005), Philosophy of the Arts)
• Perceptions of beauty are pleasurable
• Naturally, sight of beauty sensationalizes the senses
• Aesthetics: 'Sense of perception' is the meaning, from the Greek word "aesthesis."
• Medieval times defined aesthetics as the ‘philosophical study of art'.

Reasons People Pursue Art

• Audiences seek art for aesthetic experience.
• Artists aim to have audiences.
• Artists work to function as sources of aesthetic experience.

Edvard Munch's "The Scream"

• Munch painted his vivid experience of a scream in nature, expressing a phenomenon only he perceived that way.
• Audiences find a different aesthetic appeal in the painting's depiction, mimicking the painter's inspiration.

Philosophical Perspectives of Art

• Art as Imitation: Plato said art imitates objects and events of ordinary life, making it a copy of a copy.
• He believed art is mostly entertainment and a dangerous delusion.
• Art as Representation: Aristotle believed art is related to knowledge and human nature.
• In "Metaphysics," he says all men desire to know.
• Aristotle said poetry is a literary representation.
• Art as a Disinterested Judgment: Judgments are disinterested, meaning we take pleasure in something because we find it beautiful.
• Immanuel Kant begins "The Critique of Judgment" with an account of beauty.
• Judgements of taste must have four key distinguishing features
• Beauty behaves as if it were a property of an object
• Universality and necessity are products of the human mind.
• Judgments are both universal and necessary.
• Beautiful objects appear to be 'purposive without purpose'.
• Kant identified features of aesthetic judgments and questioned how such judgments are possible or valid, questioning if they are universal and necessary?
• Art as Communication of Emotion: Leo Tolstoy defined art as an expression of feeling or experience the audience can share.
• Art can communicate to most people by expressing meaning in an understandable way.

What is Subject and Content in Art?

• Viewing art requires clues that mediate artwork and viewer.
• Three basic components of a work of art: subject, content, and form.
• Subject: the visual focus or image extracted from the artwork. The "what."
• Content: the meaning communicated by the artist or artwork. The "why."
• Form: the development and configuration of the artwork; how elements and materials are put together. The "how."

Subjects in Art

• Subject: refers to the main idea represented in the artwork, and is basically the essence of the piece.
• To determine this, ask: What is depicted? What is the artist trying to express? How?

Golden Ratio

• The Golden Ratio is when two quantities have the same ratio as their sum to the larger quantity.
• It describes how to place elements aesthetically pleasing
• Representational Art: People or objects look like their real-world counterparts. Subjects refer to real-world objects or events. Subjects can be clearly identified; also known as figurative art.
• Non-representational Art: The artistic depiction creates objects which are nonrepresentational images and don't refer to existing forms in real life.
• Subjects can be difficult to identify, based solely on elements of art, and is also known as non-objective imaging.
• Abstaction: Images are made to look less like the object they are based on but may still be recognizable, and is a departure from reality

Sources of Subject

• Nature: Throughout history, artists have represented nature: plants, animals, bodies of water, and landmasses.
• Depictions are expressions of the sacred and the profane, sired by reality or supplemented by the artist's imagination
• Vincent Van Gogh saw art and nature as inseparable, and found solace in painting it.
• Literature/Literary: Greek and Roman mythology had references from episodes of Achilles and Aeneas, warnings about Icarus, Odysseus, Aphrodite and Myron.
• These narrations from literature gave faces to Greek and Roman deities.
• Belief/Religion: This is the distinct relationship with a higher controlling power.
• Guided by style and techniques, paintings, frescos, church architecture, vestments, tapestry were experimented with.
• History/Historical Events: Significant events inspire art.
• Breakthroughs like the discovery of fire and heliocentrism led to advancements and dynamic history.
• The subject of art may simply be referred to as “what” – what is readily seen and relates to the artwork.

Content in Art

• One must note the inspirations, and the many kinds of translation to recognize and to grasp the message of the artwork.
• Recognizing and grasping the artwork's message needs an understanding an artwork was created, and its meaning.
• The content is the emotional or intellectual message of a work of art, such as statement, expression, or mood developed by the artist.
• The artist is interpreted by the observer
• Content may be the most difficult element to identify.
• The audience must decipher the artist's thoughts by observing the work's subject and form.
• The artist thoughts can be found in: emphasis of the left-to-right diagonals, the sharp contrasts of light and dark values, and the aggressive and powerful drawing strokes

Three Value Levels of Meaning in Art

• Factual meaning: the rudimentary level of meaning extracted from identifiable forms and understanding how they relate.
• Conventional meaning: the acknowledged interpretation of the artwork using motifs, signs, symbols, and other cyphers.
• Subjective meaning: meanings stemming from the viewer or audience's circumstances when seeing art.