Art Appreciation Lesson 2
Art Appreciation Lesson 2
Art Appreciation Lesson 2
Learning Outcomes:
ASSUMPTIONS OF ART
Art is universal
Literature has provided key works of art. Among the most popular ones being
taught in school are the two Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Sanskrit
pieces Mahabharata and Ramayana are also staples in this field. These works,
purportedly written before the beginning of recorded history, are believed to be
man’s attempt at recording stories and tales that have been passed on, known, and
sung throughout the years. Art has always been timeless and universal, spanning
generations and continents through and through.
In every country and in every generation, there is always art. Oftentimes,
people feel that what is considered artistic are only those which have been made
long time ago. This is a misconception. Age is not a factor in determining art. An “…
art is not good because it is old, but old because it is good” (Dudley et al, 1960). In
the Philippines, the works of Jose Rizal and Francisco Baltazar (Balagtas)are not
being read because they are old. Otherwise, works of other Filipinos who have long
died would have been required in junior high school too. The pieces mentioned are
read in school and have remained to be with us because they are good. They are
liked and adored because they meet our needs and desires. Florante at Laura never
fails to teach high school students the beauty of love, one that is universal and pure.
Ibong Adarna, another Filipino masterpiece, has always captured the imagination of
the young with its timeless lessons. When we recite the Psalms, we feel in
communion with King David as we feel one with him in his conversation with God.
When we listen to a kundiman or perform folk dances, we still enjoy the way our
Filipino ancestors whiled away their time in the past. We do not necessarily like a
kundiman for its original meaning. We just like it.
A great piece of work will never be obsolete. Some people say that art is art for
its intrinsic worth. In John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism (1879), enjoyment in the arts
belongs to a higher good, one that lies at the opposite end of base pleasures. Art will
always be present because human beings will always express themselves and
delight in these expressions. Men will continue to use art while art persists and never
gets depleted.
Art is not nature
In the Philippines, it is not entirely novel to hear some consumers of local
movies remark that these movies produced locally are unrealistic. They contend that
local movies work around certain formula to the detriment of substance and
faithfulness to reality of the movies. These critical minds argue that a good movie
must reflect reality as closely as possible.
One important characteristic of art is that it is not nature. Art is man’s
expression of his reception of nature. Art is man’s way of interpreting nature. Art is
not nature. Art is made by man, whereas nature is given around us. It is in this
juncture that they can be considered opposites. What we find in nature should not be
expected to be present in art too. Movies are not meant to be direct representation of
reality. They may, according to the moviemaker’s perception of reality, be a
reinterpretation or even distortion of nature.
This distinction assumes that all of us see nature, perceive its elements in
myriad, different, yet ultimately valid ways. One can only imagine the story of the five
blind men who one day argue against each other on what an elephant looks like.
Each of the five blind men was holding a different part of the elephant. The first was
touching the body and thus, thought the elephant was like a wall. Another was
touching the beast’s ear and was convinced that the elephant was like a fan. The
rest was touching other different parts of the elephant and concluded differently
based on their perceptions. Art is like each of these
men’s view of the elephant. It is based on an
individual’s subjective experience of nature. It is not
meant, after all, to accurately define what the
elephant is really like in nature. Artists are not
expected to duplicate nature just as even scientists
with their elaborate laboratories cannot make
nature.
Art involves experience
For most people, art does not require a full definition. Art is just experience.
By experience, we mean the “actual doing of something” (Dudley et al., 1960). When
one says that he has an experience of something, he often means that he knows
what that something is about. Knowing a thing is different from hearing from others
what the said thing is. Art is always an experience. A painter cannot claim to know
how to paint if he has not tried holding a brush. A sculptor cannot produce a work of
art if a chisel is foreign to him. Dudley et al. (1960) affirmed that
“art depends on experience, and if one is to know art, he must
know it not as fact or information but as experience.”
Art as an Imitation
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. Human beings endeavor to reach the Forms all throughout this life,
starting with formal education in school. From looking at “shadows in the cave,” men
slowly crawl outside to behold the real entities in the world. 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. Much is true for “beauty” in this world. When one ascribes beauty to
another person, he refers to an imperfect beauty that participates only in the form of
beauty 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 than to the rational faculty of men and they imitate rather than
lead one to reality. Poetry and painting, the art forms that Plato was particularly
concerned with, do not have any place in the ideal state that Socrates (as the
protagonist) in Plato’s dialogue envisions. First, Plato is critical of the effects of art,
specifically, poetry to the people of the ideal state. Poetry rouses emotions and
feelings and thus, clouds the rationality of people. Poetry has a capacity to sway
minds without taking into consideration the use of proper reason. As such, it leads
one further away from the cultivation of the intellect that Plato campaigned for.
Likewise, Socrates is worried that art objects represent only the things in this world,
copies themselves of reality. As such, in the dialogue, Socrates claimed that 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 as a Representation
Aristotle, Plato’s most important student in philosophy, agreed with his
teacher that art is a form of imitation. However, in contrast to the disgust that his
master holds for art, Aristotle considered art as an aid to philosophy in revealing
truth. The kind of imitation that art does is not antithetical to the reaching of
fundamental truths in the world. Talking about tragedies, for example, Aristotle
(1902) in the Poetics claimed that poetry is a literary representation in general. Akin
to other art forms, poetry only admits of an attempt to represent what things might
be. For Aristotle, all kinds of art, including poetry, music, dance, painting, and
sculpture, do not aim to represent reality as it is. What art endeavors to do is to
provide a vision of what might be or the myriad possibilities in reality. Unlike Plato
who thought that art is an imitation of another imitation, Aristotle conceived of art as
representing possible versions of reality.
In the Aristotelian worldview, art serves two particular purposes. First, art
allows for the experience of pleasure. Experiences that are otherwise repugnant can
become entertaining in art. For example, a horrible experience can be made an
object of humor in a comedy. Secondly, art also has an ability to be instructive and
teach its audience things about life; thus, it is cognitive as well. Greek plays are
usually of this nature.
Art as a Disinterested Judgment
In the third critique that Immanuel Kant wrote, the “Critique of Judgement,”
Kant considered the judgment of beauty, the cornerstone of art, as something that
can be universal despite its subjectivity. Kant mentioned that judgment of beauty,
and therefore, art, is innately autonomous from specific interests. It is the form of art
that is adjudged by one who perceives art to be beautiful or more so, sublime.
Therefore, even aesthetic judgment for Kant is a cognitive activity.
Kant recognized that judgment of beauty is subjective. However, Kant
advanced the proposition that even subjective judgments are based on some
universal criterion for the said judgment. In the process, Kant responded to the age-
old question of how and in what sense can a judgment of beauty, which ordinarily is
considered to be a subjective feeling, be considered objective or universal. For Kant,
when one judges a particular painting as beautiful, one in effect is saying that the
said painting has induced a particular feeling of satisfaction from him and that he
expects the painting to rouse the same feeling from anyone. There is something in
the work of art that makes it capable of inciting the same feeling of pleasure and
satisfaction from any perceiver, regardless of his condition. For Kant, every human
being, after perception and the free play of his faculties, should recognize the beauty
that is inherent in a work of art. This is the kind of universality that a judgment of
beauty is assumed by Kant to have. So when the same person says that something
is beautiful, he does not just believe that the thing is beautiful for him, but in a sense,
expects that the same thing should put everyone in awe.
Art as a Communication of Emotion
The author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, provided
another perspective on what art is. In his book, What is Art (2016), Tolstoy defended
the production of the sometimes truly extravagant art, like operas, despite extreme
poverty in the world. For him, art plays a huge role in communication to its
audience’s emotions that the artist previously experienced. Art then serves as a
language, a communication device that articulates feelings and emotions that are
otherwise unavailable to the audience. In the same way that language
communicates information to other people, art communicates emotions. In listening
to music, in watching an opera, and in reading poems, the audience is at the
receiving end of the artist communicating his feelings and emotions.
Tolstoy is fighting for the social dimension of art. As a purveyor of man’s
innermost feelings 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 feelings and emotions of people from the past and present, from one
continent to another. In making these possibly latent feelings and emotions
accessible to anyone in varied time and location, art serves as a mechanism of
cohesion for everyone. Thus, even at present, one can commune with early
Cambodians and their struggles by visiting the Angkor Wat or can definitely feel for
the early royalties of different Korean dynasties by watching Korean dramas. Art is
what allows for these possibilities.
Let’s Wrap It Up
These assumptions on art are its universality; it’s not being nature, and its
need for experience. Art is present in every part of the globe and in every period
time. This is what is meant by its universality. Art not being nature, not even
attempting to simply mirror nature, is the second assumption about art. Art is
always a creation of the artist, not nature. Finally, without experience, there is no
art. The artist has to be foremost, a perceiver who is directly in touch with art.
Art has remained relevant in our daily lives because most of it has played
some form of function for man. Since the dawn of the civilization, art has been at
the forefront of giving color to man’s existence. The different functions of art may
be classified as personal, social, or physical. An art’s function is personal if it
depends on the artist herself or sometimes still, the audience of the art. There is a
social function in art if and when it has a particular social function, when it
addresses a collective need of a group of people. Physical function, finally, has
something to do with direct, tangible uses of art. Not all products of art have
function. This should not disqualify them as art though. As mentioned and
elucidated by some of the most important thinkers in history, art may serve either
as imitation, representation, a disinterested judgment, or simply a communication
of emotion.
Other perspectives:
Art forms us by meeting our needs. Not our most basic needs for food or
shelter, but deeper and more subtle ones that define us as people and as members
of a society. These needs vary with time and cultural setting. In a culture in which
religion is very important, for example, a great deal of art answers that need. In our
own society, which emphasizes individual achievement, much of our art is devoted to
self-expression. Note that here we are considering public purposes and functions of
art, not the personal goals or needs of artists themselves. Thus, we consider art in its
social and cultural context, as it relates to six functions, with several diverse
examples of each: delight, commentary, worship, commemoration, persuasion, and
self-expression.
Art as Commentary
Art has often been used to answer to our need for information. Before the
advent of photography in the nineteenth century, artists and illustrators were our only
source of information about the visual appearance of
anything. By providing a visual account of an event or a
person, or by expressing an opinion, artists have shaped
not only the way people understand their own world but
also how their culture is viewed by others. Artists who fulfill
our need for commentary often speak in a language easy
to understand; they view art’s primary goal as
communication between artist and viewer by means of
subject matter. Nineteenth-century painter Gustave
Courbet spoke for this function of art when he wrote, “To
record the manners, ideas, and aspect of the age as I
myself saw them—to be a man as well as a painter, in
short to create a living art—that has been my aim.” One of
the classic instances of commentary in Western art is
Francisco Goya’s print series The Disasters of War. Goya made 82 prints dealing
with various episodes in Spain’s 1808–14 war of resistance against domination by
Napoleon. I Saw This (fig. 2.6), for example, shows a stream of refugees fleeing their
homes in advance of invading troops. The mother and child in the foreground draw
an unbelieving stare from another refugee at the left. Goya
both witnessed and recorded many scenes in that conflict,
some of them rather gruesome; the title of this work
indicates his presence at the scene. His commentaries in
The Disasters of War form a strong protest against the
brutality and violence of conflict. In order to improve their
distribution, he created them as prints, or works that exist
in multiple copies.
Capturing what they had seen was also one of the
more important goals of the Impressionist artists of the
nineteenth century.Artists’ commentaries often include
personal judgments on conditions, facts, or politics.
Art as Self-Expression
For most of human history, self-
expression has not been a primary reason for
creating art. Other social and cultural needs,
such as the five we have already considered,
more fully engaged the talents of artists. In
more recent times, however, particularly
when a great deal of art is sold as a private
possession, self-expression has increasingly
become one of art’s most common functions.
Art fulfils an expressive function when an
artist conveys information about his or her
personality or feelings or worldview, aside
from a social cause, market demand,
commissioning ruler, or aesthetic urge. Such
art becomes a meeting site between artist and viewer, the viewer feeling empathy
and gaining an understanding of the creator’s personality. We all derive comfort from
the fact that others in the world are similar to ourselves, and artists’ various modes of
self-expression reach out to us in hopes of establishing a bond. Self-portraiture has
traditionally been an important vehicle by which artists reach out to us. Felix
Nussbaum’s Self-Portrait with Jewish Identity Card (fig. 2.22) is one of the more
compelling works of this type. The artist furtively turns back his collar to reveal the
yellow star that the Nazi regime required all Jews to wear. In his other hand he holds
the card with his ethnicity prominently displayed in red block letters. The high wall
behind, and his sidelong glance, tell of an existence haunted by fear and oppression.
The artist invites us to share his personal and political anxiety. Nussbaum’s life
played out tragically: In the year after he painted this
work, he was arrested and sent to a concentration
camp, where he joined the millions of other victims of
the Holocaust.
Kandinsky often named his works after
musical forms, because he wanted them to
communicate as music does: “Color directly
influences the soul,” he wrote; “Color is the
keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the
piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that
plays, touching one key or another purposefully, to
cause vibrations in the soul.” He hoped that the souls
of viewers would resonate with the rhythms and
colors of his paintings, and infect viewers with the
same emotions that he felt while creating them. As
we have seen, many works of art may fulfil more
than one function; art that is persuasive may also
delight with its beauty; a religious work may also express the creator’s personal
quest for transcendence; a commemorative piece may also inform us. Yet all art
meets one human need or another, and has the power to shape our lives in many
ways.
KEY TERMS
aesthetics – in the art context, the philosophy of art focusing on questions regarding what art
is and how it is evaluated, the concept of beauty, and the relationship between the idea of
beauty and the concept of art
Choose one artwork under each given category that you are familiar with. This
can be the last artwork that you have come across with or the one that made the
most impact to you. Criticize each using the guide questions provided.
Categories:
Movie Novel Poem
Music An architectural structure A piece of clothing
Category: ___________________________
Artwork: ____________________________