Module 2 - Chapter 2

Methods of Presenting Art

Subject, is the term used for whatever is represented in a work of art. It could be a person, thing,
event or situation depicted by the artist. It answers the question “what is the artwork about?”
Kinds or sources of at subjects:
1. Portraits 7. History
2. Everyday life 8. Legend
3. Still life 9. Religion
4. Animals 10. Mythology
5. Figures 11. Dreams
6. Scapes 12. Fantasy
Content refers to what the artist expresses or communicates on the whole in his work.
 Sometimes it is spoken of as the meaning of the work.
 In literature it is called the “theme”.
 It reveals the attitude toward his subject.
The use of subject in art may be classified into two:
A. Representational or objective art are works of art that have visible subject.
Painting, sculpture, the graphics arts, literature, and the theater arts are considered
representational arts.
B. Non-representational or non-objective art are those that do not have visible subject.
Music, architecture, and many of the functional arts are non-representational.
They appeal directly to the senses primarily because of the satisfying organization of their
sensuous and expressive elements.
Subject has three levels of meaning interpretation:
a. Factual – literal presentation
b. Conventional – special meaning related to a culture or religion
Examples:
Flag is the agreed-upon symbol for a nation.
Cross is a Christian symbol of faith
c. Subjective – personal intention of the artist understood only through his interpretation
Common subject depicted in art
1. Landscape, seascape, cityscape
 Artists have always been fascinated with their physical environment.
 Filipino painters have captures on canvas the Philippine countryside, as well as the sea
bathed in pale moonlight or catching the reflection of the setting sun.
 Fernando Amorsolo romanticized Philippine landscapes, turning the rural areas into idyllic
places where agrarian problems are virtually unknown.
 Modern painters seem to more attracted to scenes in cities. Traffic jams, high-rises, and
skylines marked by uneven rooftops and television antennae have caught their fancy.
2. Still life
 Groups of inanimate objects arranged in an indoors setting such as flower and fruit
arrangements, musical instruments, dishes of food on dining tables.
3. Animals
 The earliest known paintings are representations of animals on the walls of caves.
 In fact, the carabao has been a favorite subject of Filipino artists.
 4. Portraits
 A portrait is a realistic likeness of a person in a sculpture, painting, drawing, or print.
 Besides the face, other things worth noticing in portraits are the subject’s hand, which can
be very expressive, and his particular attire and accessories. They reveal so much of the
person and his time.
 Portraits are also used to mark milestones in people’s lives. Baptisms, graduations, and
weddings are often occasion for people to pose for their portraits.
5. Figures
 The sculpture’s chief subject has traditionally been the human body, nude or clothed.
 The grace and ideal proportions of the human form were captured in religious sculpture by
the ancient Greeks. To them physical beauty was the symbol of moral and spiritual
perfections; thus, they portrayed their gods and goddesses as possessing human shapes.
6. Everyday life
 Artists have always shown deep concern about life around them.
 Rice threshers, cockfighters, candle vendors, street musicians, children at play, etc.
7. History and legend
 History consists of verifiable facts, legends of unverifiable ones.
 Juan Luna’s Blood Compact, not at Malacañang, commemorates the agreement between
Sikatuna and Legaspi which they supposedly sealed by drinking wine in which drops of each
other’s blood had been mixed.
 Luna’s prize-winning Spolarium depicts a scene during the days of the early Roman Empire
when gladiatorial fights were a popular form of entertainment for the upper class.
 At Ford Santiago are paintings showing incidents in the life of Jose Rizal.
 Malakas and Maganda and Mariang Makiling are among the legendary subjects which have
been rendered in painting and sculpture by not a few Filipino artists.
8. Religion and myths
 Most of the world’s religions have used arts to aid worship, to instruct, to inspire feelings of
devotion, and to impress and covert non-believers.
 Some Filipino artists attempted to render in art not only traditional religious themes but folk
beliefs in creatures of lower mythology as well. Solomon Saprid has done statues of the
tikbalang, and some painters have rendered their own ideas about the matanda sa punso,
aswang, tianak, mangkukulam.
9. Dreams and fantasies
 Dreams are usually vague and illogical.
 Artist, especially the surrealist, have tried to depict dreams, as well as the grotesque terrors
and apprehensions that lurk in the depths of the subconscious.
Ways of Representing a Subject
Artists have choices as to what ways or methods to use to present their subjects or to express their
ideas. These methods have their own background stories as well as characteristic ways of being presented
which are recognizable to most art enthusiasts or easily understood by would-be art enthusiasts.
The following are the most common ways of presenting art subjects:
1. Realism
Realism is a way of presenting a subject the way it looks in everyday life, the way as seen by the
naked eye. The artist tries to approximate on canvas or in any medium how something or someone
authentically appears without any addition, embellishment or interpretation by the artist. If a tree is colored
brown, the artist colors it as brown. If a flower is red, the artist colors it as red. If someone is beautiful or
ugly, he is drawn as such. This method is sometimes disturbing or offending for if something looks or
sounds gory, gross or shocking, it is depicted also as such.
Generally, realism portrays the objective truth about people, life or situations, whether good or
bad, pleasant or harsh, ugly or beautiful. It favors the portrayal of actual life in real settings, no matter
how disturbing or offending, and tries to send out socio-political or moral messages of the harsh realities
of living a life under industrialism and capitalism. In the visual arts, the subject is presented in “true-to-
life” manner; in theater, people are presented as impotent or struggling subjects who are burdened in a
troubled world; in literature, characters have flaws in an imperfect life where the author injects
commentaries about social, political or religious issues. It also avoids the use of exaggerated heroes in
favor of ordinary people.
Examples of realism paintings by Fernando Amorsolo, the “Grand Old Man of Philippine Art,”
Philippine’s National Artist in Painting, and the Philippines’ foremost portraitist and painter of rural
Philippine landscapes.

Landscape Painting

Detail from Fernando Amorsolo’s

1945 Defense of a Filipina
Woman’s Honor, which is UP Oblation by Guillermo E. Tolentino,
representative of Amorsolo’s National Artist in Sculpturer
World War II – era paintings

Countryside Scene in Oil

2. Abstraction
The word abstract means to “move away” or “to separate from.” It is a way of moving away from
reality or separating oneself from the objective truth; it is the opposite of realism or the objective
representation of art. In abstraction, the artist does not present his subject the way it is found in the actual
setting. The artist uses his ideas to reflect thigs or images in a highly personal interpretation. He depicts
his subject the way he thinks or feels about it; he tries to represent his subject (either visually or verbally)
in a manner that eliminates some measure of physical details and retains, in his mind, only the essential
characteristics. It is subjective, highly personal, opinionated, and extra-challenging for it constantly asks
the viewer to discover its meaning.
Abstraction can be used through:
a. Distortion. In distortion, the artist bends, twists or misshapes the image to achieve an unnatural
deviation of shape or position of any part of the subject’s body producing visible deformity. What appears
is a subject, misshapen or twisted, totally unlike as it appears in reality.
Example: Henry Moore’s sculptural works and the ancient Egyptian paintings and sculptural works are
good examples of this kind.

b. Cubism. In this method, the artist uses geometrical shapes to represent his subjects. The subjects
are presented as a series of cubes, cones or spherical shapes which can be seen from different angles or
viewpoints all together at the same time.
Spanish painter Pablo Picasso is often credited as the first Abstraction artist who co-developed
with Georges Braque the Cubist method between 1908 and 1912.

Prayer Before Meals by Vicente Manansala

Guernica by Pablo Picasso

House of the Black Madonna, first

Ang Kiukok Fisherman, 1995, oil on canvas example of Cubist architecture in Prague

c. Elongation. This is a method used by the artist when he intentionally lengthens or elongates the
figure of his subject to achieve a desired effect. This method shows a subject or a part of a subject as
irregularly proportional to other parts of the subject like the very long neck of the Madonna or the unusual
length of the child and the long arms of David.

Madonna of the Long Neck in Prague David by Michaelangelo

 d. Mangling. This is an uncommon way used by the artist to present his subject. He achieves the
effect by cutting, chopping, mutilating, lacerating, or hacking the image.

e. Abstract Expressionism. It is a movement of painting which began in New York City that tried
to declare its independence in European styles. In this method, the act of painting becomes an art itself as
the process of painting becomes a drama of its own. The artist becomes the star as he unleashes his ideas
on canvas, showing the glorification of the act of painting as a means of visual communication. This
method is also called “action painting.” The following pictures are of Jackson Pollock, the quintessential
action painter executing his craft by interlacing lines of dripped and poured paint on a very large canvas.

Other abstract expressionist works:

Forearmed, 1967 by Alfonso Ossorio Mark di Suvero, Aurora, 1992 - 1993

Peculiar Velocity by Jackson Pollock

3. Symbolism
Symbolism is the artist’s way of presenting his idea or feeling using a representation or sign to
stand for something other than self. Some of the symbols used are globally known like # for number, %
for percentage, $ for dollars, white for purity, red for war, a dove for peace or a snake for a traitor. An
artist uses these signs to stand for things which he wants to be represented, and these are oftentimes
universally understood because of conventional usage, connection or general relationship.
Symbolism in literature can be achieved by representing the story’s theme on a physical level. An
example might be the occurrence of a storm at a critical point of the story when there is conflict or high
emotions. Similarly, a transition from day to night or spring to winter could mean a move from goodness
to evil, or hope to despair. A river could represent the flow of life, from birth to death and flowers can
symbolize youth or beauty.
The movie series Star Wars symbolizes faith and religion in a world overcoming evil. The design
of some buildings is also meant to be symbolic. A picture of the Canadian War Museum building. Its
façade represents the bow of the ship, symbolizing the navy and the role it played in wartime.
The UP Oblation, represent student to serve the country, the iconic symbol of the University of the
Philippines, is 3.5-meter concrete sculpture painted to look like bronze, symbolizing the 350 years of
Spanish rule in the Philippines. It represents selfless dedication and service to the nation, and as Guillermo
Tolentino, the sculptor himself, describe it as a:
“…completely nude figure of a young man with outstretched arms and open hands, with tilted
head, closed eyes an parted lips murmuring a prayer, with breast forward in the act of offering himself…”

Canadian War Museum UP Oblation

4. Dadaism
Dadaism is a short-lived art movement which began in Switzerland in 1916 and ended in 1922. It
got its name from the French word dada which means “hobby horse.” According to
www.historymania.com, the basis of Dada is nonsense. It began as a protest movement against World War
I for it sees war as an absurd and barbaric exercise. It sought to ruin art for a world which did not deserve
it. It attacked the bourgeois (capitalists) for allowing war to happen and this movement became known as
an anti-art association. With the order of the world destroyed by World War I, Dada was a way to express
the confusion felt by many people as their world turned upside down. There was no attempt to find
meaning in disorder, but rather to accept disorder as the nature of the world.
This movement rejects the traditional way of art appreciation and how art is defined in
contemporary art scenes. Dadaists produced art works that showed the sad and sorry state of the world
which the capitalists did not like and opined as “ridiculous and irrelevant and therefore should be
destroyed.” This movement attacks the reason and logic of the capitalist society by producing works of
art which uses chaos and irrationality. This method ignores aesthetics and intends to offend man’s
sensibilities.
This method then uses chaos, irrationality, and nonsense as a way of presenting its subject.

Mona Lisa painting of da Vinci Fountain After Us Motherhood by Marcel Duchamp

5. Fauvism
Fauvism is rooted in the French word “fauve” which means wild beast. This is an early-20th-
century movement (1898-1906) in painting begun by a group of French artists and marked by the use of
bold, often distorted forms and vivid colors. The movement’s name is derived from the judgment of a
critic who visited the Fauvists’ first exhibit in Paris (1905) and referred to the artists disparagingly as “les
fauves” (“wild beasts”).
Painters who use this method use bold colors, oftentimes unmixed and straight from commercially-
produced tubes, spontaneous and rough execution (oftentimes referred to as abnormal painting techniques)
coupled with turbulent emotionalism. The dominant figure of the group was Henri Matisse; others were
André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, Georges Braque, and Georges Rouault.

Woman with a Hat, 1905 The Dance

by Henri Matisse by Henri Matisse

6. Surrealism
Surrealism is a combination of two words, super and realism. Surrealism developed out of the
Dada activities of World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. Like the
Dadaists, Surrealists believe that excessive rational and bourgeois thinking brought about World War I.
its leader, Andre Breton, a medical/psychiatric doctor who treated shell-shocked army soldiers using
psychoanalysis, believed that Freud’s work with free association, dream analysis and the hidden
unconscious ways of great importance in developing methods to liberate imagination. It aimed to
revolutionize human experience, including its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects, by freeing
people from what they saw as false rationality, and restrictive customs and traditions.
In literature, surrealists believe in “automatic writing,” spontaneously writing without censoring
one’s thoughts. It values the significance of dreams and disdains literal interpretations of objects. It gives
more significance to poetic undercurrents as well as to connotations and overtones. Although automatic
writing may appear to be spontaneous and totally unplanned, “it is actually edited and well thought of,”
according to Breton.
In music, several works by musicians like Edgard Varese’s Arkana was inspired by a dream
sequence. Surrealism is also found in the improvisation in jazz and blues music.
Politically, surrealism is leftist, anarchist or communist, believing in man’s freedom and in anti-
colonial revolution.
In the visual arts, it is a method which is a combination of the depictive, the abstract, and the
psychological – to stand for the alienation which many people felt in the modern period, combined with
the sense of reaching more deeply into the psyche, to be “made whole with one’s individuality.”
In theater, Antonin Artaud tried to create a new theatrical form which would be “immediate and
direct, linking the unconscious minds of performers and spectators, . . . where emotions, feelings, and the
metaphysical were expressed not through text or dialogue but physically, creating a mythological, typical,
symbolic vision, closely related to the world of dreams.” This was called the Theater of Cruelty, the
predecessor of the theater of the absurd.
 The Persistence of Memory Indecision
Bandage of Faith
by Salvador Dali by Jon Jaylo
by Danny Sillada

7. Futurism
In this method, the artist draws, paints or chooses subjects borne out of modern technology or
products of modern living and tries to capture the essence and vitality of modern life. The Futurists admire
speed, technology, youth and violence, the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the
technological triumph of humanity over nature, and they are passionate nationalists. Suffice to say, they
do not like the past and abhor tradition. They often painted modern urban scenes and vehicles in motion
while futurist music rejected tradition and introduced experimental sounds inspired by machinery.
In literature, it can be characterized by its “unexpected combinations of images and hyper-
conciseness (not to be confused with the actual length of poem). The Futurists called their style of poetry
parole in libertà (word autonomy) in which all ideas of meter were rejected and the word became the main
unit of concern. In this way, the Futurists managed to create a new language free of syntax punctuation,
and metrics that allowed for free expression.”
In theater, futuristic works are characterized by scenes that are of few sentences long, have an
emphasis on nonsensical humor, and attempt to discredit the deep rooted traditions via parody and other
devaluation techniques.

Umberto Boccioni, 1913 Dancing House

‘Unique Forms of Continuity in Space’ in Prague
8. Impressionism
Impressionism as an art movement and method began in Paris during the late 1860’s and early
1870’s. French impressionism was spontaneous, color-sensitive style of painting. It rejected the
conventions of the academic art and gave way to naturalistic and down to earth treatment of subject matter.
Impressionist artists sought to capture fleeting moments and use natural color schemes offering a whole
new pictorial language. Impressionistic painting includes visible brush strokes, light colors with emphasis
on light in its changing qualities to accentuate the effects of passage of time and unusual visual angles.
The movement indirectly paved the way for the artistic style of the 20th century. Famous artists on the
Impressionist movement included Claude Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pisarro (1803), Pierre Auguste
Renoir (1841-1919), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Edouard Manet (1832-83),
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), Berthe Morisot (1841-95) and Mary Cassatt (1845-1926).
In literature, impressionism presents a subject through the prism of the artist’s sensibility and thru
the creative process to bring about aesthetic awareness. Impressionistic writing seeks not to convey a
message but rather to evoke a mood or an atmosphere where both artist and reader find significant
meaning.

Rouen Cathedral West

Landscape at Chaponval Peonies in a Vase
Portal Dull Weather
by Camille Pissaro by Edouard Manet
by Claude Monet

9. Expressionism
Expressionism refers to “art that expresses intense emotion.” The artists’ work is an expression of
his inner experience rather than solely realistic portrayal.
According to www.artmovemnts.co.uk, expressionism is “an artistic style in which the artist
attempts to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and
events arouse in him. He accomplishes his aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy
and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. In a broader sense
Expressionism is one of the main currents of art in the later 19th and the 20th centuries, and its qualities of
highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-expression are typical of a wide range of modern artists and
art movements. The expressionist artist substitutes to the visual object reality his own image of this object,
which he feels as an accurate representation of its real meaning. The search of harmony and forms is not
as important as trying to achieve the highest expression intensity, both from the aesthetic point of view
and according to idea and human crisis.
In literature, the writer uses expressionism through disturbing incidents, tense dialogue,
exaggerations and distortions characterized by chaotic, frenzied imagery and vehement tone.
In music, expressionism puts the emotional expression above everything else. Expressionistic
music is often dissonant, fragmented, and densely written, portraying what is going on inside the
composer’s mind; it is an expression of what is felt.
In theater, expressionist plays often dramatize the spiritual awakening and sufferings of their
protagonists. The protagonists in a typical expressionist play journey through a series of incidents that are
often not casually related, often dramatizing the struggle against bourgeois values and established
authority. The speech is heightened, either expansive and rhapsodic, or clipped and telegraphic; most
speeches consist of one or two lines, though these sections of short speeches alternate with long lyrical
passages. Expressionist plays are often highly subjective: the dramatic action is seen through the eyes of
the protagonist which seems distorted or dreamlike. Expressionist drama is often opposed to society and
the family.
In architecture, expressionism refers to architecture of any date or location that exhibits some of
the qualities of the original movement such as distortion, fragmentation or the communication of violent
or overstressed emotion.
Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh Expressionist Sculpture

The Scream by Edvard Munch Einstein Tower, Berlin by Erich Mendelson

Activity – Chapter 2
Name: ________________________________________Course/Year: __________ Date: ___________
Answer the following questions.
1. What are the different kinds or sources of art subjects?
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2. How does a realist tackle objectivity in his art work?
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3. What are the different methods of abstraction?
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4. In what way does Dadaism reject the traditional way of art presentation?
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5. How does modern technology influence futuristic artists?
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6. Discuss subjectivity in the following art methods:
a. Symbolism
b. Impressionism
c. Expressionism