Introduction to Art: Nature, History, and Appreciation

• The text covers an introduction to art, its assumptions, nature, forms, functions, elements, principles, art history, and the roles of artists and artisans.

Introduction, Assumptions, and Nature of Art

• Art encompasses various forms of expression and creativity, enhancing human life and reflecting culture.
• The term "art" originates from the Latin word "ars," denoting skills and crafts, signifying the act of making or creating.
• Art is subjective and varies across communities, stemming from emotional expression and aiming to represent the inward significance of things.
• Three assumptions of art as argued by Davis (2020):
  • Art is universal, timeless, and transcends generations.
  • Art is an expression and interpretation of nature.
  • Art involves experience and sensory engagement.

Art Appreciation vs. Art History

• Art history analyzes art's meaning in its historical context, while art appreciation involves understanding the universal qualities of great art.
• Art appreciation entails interpreting, understanding, and enjoying artificial arts through work and experience.
• Creativity is integral to art, activating originality, identity, and fostering thinking, exploring, discovering, and imagining.
• Art enriches lives, stimulates senses, prompts thought, and offers insight into the human condition.

Forms of Art

• Art takes countless forms, including painting, sculpture, architecture, music, dance, literature, photography, digital art, graffiti, animation, and video.
• Painting involves creating meaningful effects on a flat surface using pigments, as exemplified by Ang Kiukok's "Fishermen."
• Sculpture involves designing and constructing three-dimensional forms, as seen in Guillermo Tolentino's "The Oblation."
• Architecture is designing and constructing buildings and structures.
• Music combines and regulates sounds to express ideas and emotions.
• Dance uses the human body as its medium.
• Theater recreates a story on stage with actors in front of an audience.
• Motion pictures project a series of pictures to create the effect of movement.
• Literature combines written or spoken words into artistic and emotional forms.

Functions of Art

• Classifications of art:
  • Directly functional art: objects with common use and aesthetic purposes, such as buildings and furniture.
  • Indirectly functional art: arts perceived through the senses, like painting, sculpture, dance, literature, and music.
• Functions of art:
  • Personal function: expressing artists' feelings and ideas, providing therapeutic value, and offering new perspectives.
  • Social function: displayed and celebrated in public situations, commemorating important figures and events.
  • Physical function: making lives physically comfortable through functional objects like tools and containers.

Subject and Content in Art

• Art is a liberating passion that allows artists to express themselves freely.
• Subject: the visual focus or image extracted from the artwork, categorized into two types:
  • Representational art: depicts objects or events in the real world.
  • Non-representational art: does not reference the real world, using visual elements to convey feelings or emotions.
• Kinds of subject:
  • Still life: compilation of inanimate objects.
  • History: depiction of factual events from the past.
  • Religion: art as the handmaid of religion.
  • Mythology: stories of gods and goddesses.
  • Dreams and fantasy: expressions of the unconscious.
  • Landscape: natural scenery.
  • Nature: focused interpretation of natural elements.
  • Portraiture: image of a specific person, animal, or group.
  • Abstract: a non-representational work using color, shape, and pattern.
• Content conveys the meaning or message expressed by the artist, answering the question "why".
• Three levels of meaning:
  • Factual meaning: identifiable forms and their relationships.
  • Conventional meaning: acknowledged interpretation using motifs, signs, and symbols.
  • Subjective meaning: influenced by the viewer's circumstances and values.

Elements and Principles of Art

• Elements of art includes:
  • Line: a mark with length and direction.
  • Color: hue, intensity, and value.
  • Space: distance or area between things (positive and negative).
  • Texture: the surface quality of an object (actual or implied).
• Principles of art:
  • Balance: distribution of visual weight (symmetrical/asymmetrical/radial).
  • Contrast: major differences between elements.
  • Emphasis: attracting attention to the focal point.
  • Movement: a result of rhythm.
  • Pattern: uniform repetition.
  • Rhythm: created repetition of patterns.
  • Unity/Variety: unified but diverse visual elements.

Artist and Artisan

• Artists and artisans create magnificent artworks, providing significant roles in the art.
• An artist expresses feelings and perceptions through various elements or materials.
• An artisan is a skilled worker who makes things by hand with functional and decorative value.
• An artist is also someone who does creative arts while artisans creates art, like furniture, textiles, and sculptures by hand.
• Both artists and artisans articulate a vision through their art or craft
• Production process is planned and plotted to achieve artistic beauty and materialize ideas.
• The medium is the material used to materialize concepts, such as watercolor, oil, or crayon used in painting.
• Techniques involve transformation of ideas through appropriate methods, such as painting.
• Painting involves using mediums like pastel, oil, or watercolor for visual appeal.
• Blowing uses air to create designs on glass or paper.
• Etching engraves lines or areas into a metal plate using acid.
• Tinkering involves making changes to improve or repair something.
• Splattering involves pouring, splashing, or flicking paint onto a canvas.
• Throwing forms clay on a potter's wheel or throwing paint at a canvas.
• Coloring uses watercolors, colored pencils, or crayons.
• Cutting creates images by wood carving and paper cutting.
• Both artists and artisans need technical knowledge, competence, and creativity.

Art History

• An art movement is a tendency or style with a common philosophy followed by a group of artists during a specific period.
• Postmodernist theorists posit that the ideas of art movements are no longer applicable.
• Some art movements and styles include:
  • Abstract expressionism: encompasses American 20th-century art movements with large abstract paintings.
  • Art Nouveau: flourished between 1890 and 1910, used in architecture, interior design, and jewelry, and is inspired by natural elements.
  • Art Deco: emerged in France in 1925, blurring the line between mediums, using advanced technology and elegant materials.
  • Avant-garde: innovative concepts in culture, politics, and art.
  • Baroque: developed in Europe from the early 17th to mid-18th century, involving culture.
  • Classism: embodied in the styles, theories, or philosophies, concentrating on traditional forms from ancient Greece and Rome.
  • Conceptual art: arose during the 1960s, emphasizing ideas and theoretical practices.
  • Constructivism: developed around 1915, abstract art rejecting "art for art's sake.".
  • Cubism: movement begun in 1907, developed a visual language with geometric planes.
  • Dada/Dadaism: formed during the First World War, displaying conventional, negative thoughts in social values.
  • Expressionism: international artistic moment expressing emotional experience rather than physical reality.
  • Fauvism: characterized by vibrant color and bold brushstrokes.
  • Futurism: founded in 1909, aiming to capture the dynamism of the modern mechanical world.
  • Impressionism: attempted to objectively record impressions using small brushstrokes, emphasizing light.
  • Installation art: developed in the late 1950s, characterized by large-scale, mixed-media constructions.
  • Land art/Earth art: movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, with works made directly in the landscape.
  • Minimalism: movements from the 1960s, works composed of simple art.
  • Neo-Impressionism: France from 1886 to 1906, renounced the spontaneity of Impressionism for a measured technique.
  • Neoclassicism: drawing inspiration from classical art of Ancient Greece and Rome.
  • Performance art: emerged in the 1960s, created through actions performed by the artist.
  • Pointillism: technique of painting characterized by tiny dots of pure color applied in patterns.
  • Pop art: emerged in the 1950s, drawing inspiration from popular imagery and products.
  • Post-Impressionism: describe the reaction against the naturalistic depiction of light and color.
  • Realism: a reaction to Romanticism, presented both the good and evil.
  • Rococo: a movement from France in the early 1700s, consists of elaborate ornamentation.
  • Surrealism: founded in 1924, sought to liberate thought and human experience from rationalism.
  • Suprematism: coined in 1915, expressed in the simplest geometric forms and dynamic compositions.