1 ART APPRECIATION: SUMMER MIDTERM NOTES
What is Art Appreciation?
 Recognition of the good qualities and understanding of art
 Acquiring knowledge leads to appreciation
 Is the knowledge and understanding of the universal and timeless
qualities that identify all great art.
What is Art?
• The word “art” comes from the ancient Latin ars which means
“craft or specialized form of skill”
• Arts in Medieval Latin meant “any special form of book-learning,
such as grammar or logic, magic or astrology.”
Four Common Essentials of art:
1. Art has to man-made.
2. Art must be creative, not imitative.
3. Art must benefit and satisfy man.
4. Art is expressed through a certain medium or material by which the
artist communicates himself to his audiences.
The Nature of Art
• Art does not need to be understood to be enjoyed. It can simply be
experienced. But the more we understand the richer our experience
of art will be.
Assumptions of Art
• Art is universal
– Timeless, spanning generations and continents through and
through.
– “Art is not good because it is old, but old because it is
beautiful” (Dudley, et al, 1960)
– Not read because they are old but they are beautifully
written.
– Arts regardless of origin, time, and place are liked and
enjoyed by people continuously.
• Art is not nature
– Man’s expression of his reception of nature
– Man’s way of interpreting nature.
– Art is made by man, whereas nature is give around us.
– Art, not directed by representation of reality, is a perception
of reality.
– Art has its reason why the artist made it. What is it that he
wants to show?
• Art involves experience
– It is not full detail but just an experience. “Actual doing of
something.”
– “All art depends on experience, and if one is to know art,
he must know it not as fact or information but as
experience.”
Art is a product of man’s creativity, imagination, and expression.
“The role of art as a creative work is to depict the world in a completely
different light and perspective”
The Role of Creativity in Art Making
o Creativity requires thinking outside the box.
o In art, creativity is what sets apart one artwork from another.
When can we say that something is creative?
o When we have not seen anything like it
o When it is out of the ordinary
o When it is not just a copy or imitation of someone’s work
Art as Expression
o Expressing emotions is different from describing emotions.
o This makes people’s art not a reflection of what is outside or
external to them, but a reflection of their inner selves
Visual Arts
o Creation that fall under this category are those that appeals to the
sense of sight and are mainly visual in nature.
o Artists produce visual arts driven by their desire to reproduce things
that they have seen in the way that they perceived them.
o Some mediums of visual arts include paintings, drawings, letterings,
printing, sculpture, digital imaging.
1 ART APPRECIATION: SUMMER MIDTERM NOTES
Film
o Film refers to the art of putting together successions of still images
in order to create an illusion of movement.
o Filmmaking focuses on its aesthetic, cultural, and social value and is
considered both an art and an industry
• Techniques in film-making process:
– Motion-picture camera (also known as movie camera)
– Animation techniques
– Computer-generated imagery (CGI)
• Film
o Filmmaking stimulates experiences or creates one that is beyond
the scope of our imagination as it aims to deliver ideas, feelings, or
beauty to its viewers.
• Perfomance Art
• Performance art is a live art and the artist’s medium is mainly the
human body which he or she uses to perform, but also employs
other kind of art such as visual art, props, or sound.
• Performance Art
o Elements of performance arts:
• Time
• Where the performance took place
• The performer’s boy
• Relationship between the audience and the
performer(s)
o The fact that performance art is live makes it intangible, which
means it cannot be bought or traded as a commodity.
• Poetry Performance
o Poetry is an art form where the artist expresses his emotions not by
using paint, charcoal, or camera, but expresses them through
words.
• Poetry Performance
o These words are carefully selected to exhibit clarity and beauty and
to stimulate strong emotions of joy, anger, love, sorrow among
others.
o It uses a word’s emotional, musical, and spatial values that go
beyond its literal meaning to narrate emphasize, argue, or convince.
• Poetry Performance
o These words combined with movements, tone, volume, and
intensity of the delivery add to the artistic, value of the poem
• Architecture
• Art is the pursuit and creation of beautiful things while architecture
is the making of beautiful buildings.
• Architecture
o However, not all building are beautiful because some only embody
the functionality they need, but the structure, lines, forms, and
colors are not beautifully expressed.
o Important elements:
o Plan
o Construction
o Design
o Building should embody these three important elements if they
wish to merit the title architecture.
• Dance
• Dance is series of movements that follow the rhythm of the music
accompaniment.
• Dance
• Dancing is a creative art form that allows people to freely express
themselves.
– IT HAS NO RULES.
• Choreography may seem not to allow this, but in art expression,
dancers are not confined to set steps and rules but are free to
create and invent their own movements as long as they deem them
graceful and beautiful.
• Literary Art
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• Artist who practice literary arts use words to express themselves
and communicate emotions to the readers.
• Literary Art
• Simply becoming a writer does not make one a literary artist.
• Literary art goes beyond the usual professional, academic,
journalistic and other technical forms of writing.
• Literary Art
• It focuses on writing using a unique style, not following a specific
format or norm.
• It may include both fiction and non-fiction such as novels,
biographies, and poems.
– Romeo and Juliet – William Shakespeare
– The Little Prince – Antoine de Sain-Exupery
• Theater
• Theater uses live performers to present accounts or imaginary
events before a live audience.
• Theater
• Theater art performance usually follows follow a script, though they
should not be confused with literary arts.
• Like in filmmaking, theater also considers several elements such as
acting, gesture, lighting, sound effects, musical score, scenery and
props.
• Theater
• Like performance art, theater also is a live performance.
• Genres: 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.
• Applied Arts
• Artists in this field bring beauty, charm, and comfort into many
things that were useful in everyday life.
• Industrial design, interior design, fashion design, graphic design