GE 5 – ART APPRECIATION

Lesson 1. What is Art: Introduction and Assumptions

Why Study the Humanities?

 The word “art” comes from the ancient Latin, ars which means a “craft or specialized form of skill, like carpentry or
smithying or surgery” (Collingwood, 1938).
 Art then suggested the capacity to produce an intended result from carefully planned steps or method. When a man
wants to build a house, he plans meticulously to get to what the prototype promises and he executes the steps to
produce the said structure then he is engaged in art.
 The Ancient World did not have any conceived notion of art in the same way that we do now. To them, art only
meant using the bare hands to produce something that will be useful to one’s day-to-day life.
 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” (Collingwood, 1938).
 It was only during the Renaissance Period that the word reacquired a meaning that was inherent in it ancient form
of craft.
 Early Renaissance artists saw their activities merely as craftsmanship, devoid of a whole lot of intonations that are
attached to the word now.
 It was during the seventeenth century when the problem and idea of aesthetics, the study of beauty, began to
unfold distinctly from the notion of technical workmanship, which was the original conception of the word “art.”
 It was finally in the eighteenth century when the word has evolved to distinguish between fine arts and the useful
arts. The fine arts would come to mean “not delicate or highly skilled arts, but ‘beautiful’ arts” (Collingwood, 1938).
(Five Main Fine Arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry, with performing arts
including theatre and dance.)
 This is something more akin to what is now considered art.
 “The humanities constitute one of the oldest and most important means of expression developed by man” (Dudley
et. Al., 1960). Human history has witnessed how man evolved not just physically but also culturally, from cave
painters to men of exquisite paintbrush users of the present. Even if one goes back to the time before written
records of man’s civilization has appeared, he can find cases of man’s attempts of not just crafting tools to live and
survive but also expressing his feelings and thoughts.
 The Galloping Wild Boar found in the cave of Altamira, Spain is one such example. In 1879, a Spaniard and his
daughter were exploring a cave when they saw pictures of a wild boar, hind, and bison. According to experts, these
paintings were purported to belong to Upper Paleolithic Age, several thousands of years before the current era.
 Pre-historic men, with their crude instruments, already showcased and manifested earliest attempts at recording
man’s innermost interests, preoccupations, and thoughts.
 The humanities, then, ironically, have started even before the term has been coined. Human persons have long been
exercising what it means to be a human long before he was even aware of his being one.
 The humanities stand tall in bearing witness to this magnificent phenomenon. Any human person, then, is tasked to
participate, if not, totally partake in this long tradition of humanizing himself. Since the 19 th century, Humanities has
been define as the discipline that investigates the expression of the human mind which includes music, art,
literature, poetry and theatre.

Assumptions of Art
Art is Universal

Literature has provided key works of art. Among the most popular ones being taught in school are two Greek epics,
the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Sanskrit pieces Mahabharata and Ramayana are 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 are 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 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 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. We enjoy it. Or just as one of the characters in the movie Bar Boys thought, kundiman makes one concentrate
better.

The first assumption then about the humanities is that art has been crafted by all people regardless of origin,
time, place, and that it stayed on because it is liked and enjoyed by people continuously. 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.

Paul Cezanne, a French painter, painted a scene from reality entitled Well and Grinding Wheel in the Forest of the
Chateau Noir. The said scene is inspired by a real scene in a forest around the Chateau Noir area near Aix in
Cezanne’s native Provence. Comparing the two, one can see that Cezanne’s landscape is quite different from the
original scene. Cezanne has changed some patterns and details from the way they were actually in the photograph.
What he did is not nature. It is art.
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 were 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.
Once this point has been made, a student of humanities can then ask further questions such as: What reasons might
the artist have in creating something? Why did Andres Bonifacio write “Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa?” What
 motivation did Juan Luna have in creating his masterpiece, the Spoliarium? In whatever work of art, one should
always ask why the artist made it. What is it that he wants to show?
Art involves Experience
Getting this far without a satisfactory definition of art can be quite weird for some. 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. When one claims that he has experienced falling in love, getting hurt, and bouncing back, he in
effect claims that he knows the (sometimes) endless cycle of loving. When one asserts having experienced preparing
a particular recipe, he in fact asserts knowing how the recipe is made. Knowing a thing is different from hearing from
others what the said thing is. A radio DJ dispensing advice on love when he himself has not experienced it does not
really know what he is talking about. A choreographer who cannot execute a dance step himself is a bogus. Art is
always an experience. Unlike fields of knowledge that involve data, art is known by experiencing. 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 “[a]ll art depends on experience, and if one is to know art, he
must know it not as fact or information but as experience.
A work of art then cannot be abstracted from actual doing. In order to know what an artwork is, we have to sense
it, see or hear it, and see AND hear it. To fully appreciate our national hero’s monument, one must go to Rizal Park
and seethe actual sculpture. In order to know Beyonce’s music, one must listen to it to actually experience them. A
famous story about someone who adores Picasso goes something like this: “Years ago, Gertrude Stein was asked
why she bought the pictures of the then unknown artist Picasso. ‘I like to look at them,’ said Miss Stein” (Dudley et.
Al., 1960). At the end of the day, one fully gets acquainted with art if one immerses himself into it. In the case of
Picasso, one only learns about Picasso’s work by looking at it. That is precisely what Miss Stein did.
In matters of art, the subject’s perception is of primacy. One can read hundreds of reviews about a particular movie,
but at the end of the day, until he sees the movie himself, he will be in no position to actually talk about the movie.
He does not know the movie until he experiences it. An important aspect of experiencing art is its being highly
personal, individual, and subjective. In philosophical terms, perception of art is always a value judgement. It depends
on who the perceiver is, his tastes, his biases and what he has inside him. Degustibus non disputandum est (Matters
of taste are not matters of dispute). One cannot argue with another person’s evaluation of art because one’s
experience can never be known by another.
Finally, one should also underscore that every experience with art is accompanied by some emotion. One either likes
or dislikes, agrees or disagrees that a work of art is beautiful. A stage play or motion picture is particularly one of
those art forms that evoke strong emotions from its audience. With experience comes emotions and feelings, after
all. Feeling and emotions are concrete proofs that the artwork has been experiences.
Conclusion
Humanities and the art have always been part of man’s growth and civilization. Since the dawn of time, man has
always tried to express his innermost thoughts and feelings about reality through creating art. Three assumptions on
art are its universality, its 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.

Reference: Caslib, B.N., Casul, I., & Garing, D. (2018). Art Appreciation. Manila: Rex Bookstore