THE HUMAN IMAGE

In the

ARTS
INTRODUCTION TO THE HUMANITIES
Steven Patrick C. Fernandez
The Human Image
in the Arts
Introduction to the Humanities
Steven Patrick C. Fernandez

Preface by Christine C. Godinez-Ortega

a textbook project of the

English Department
MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology
published by
IPAG- Artists Resource Management (ARM), Inc
 copyright 2009 by
Steven Patrick C. Fernandez and the authors
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced or used in any form or by any
means without written permission from the
author, except for the materials and images that
are in the public domain.

2nd printing, 2011

MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology

INTEGRATED PERFORMING ARTS GUILD
Artists Resource Management (ARM)
A. Bonifacio Ave., Tibanga, 9200 Iligan City
www.msuiit.edu.ph/ipag
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Designs and layout:

Steven Patrick C. Fernandez
 CONTENTS
Preface

Part One. Man’s image in the Humanities 1

Chapter 1. Man, Nature, and the Humanities 3
Chapter 2. What is Art? 9
Chapter 3. Studying Art and the Humanities 17
Discussion and Activities 25

Part Two. Mediums of Art 27

Chapter. The Basic Concepts 29
Discussion and Activities 35
Chapter 5. The Visual Arts 37
Chapter 6. Photography 47
Chapter 7. Architecture 51
Chapter 8. Literature 57
Chapter 9. Music 65
Chapter 10. Theatre 77
Chapter 11. Dance 85
Chapter 12. Cinema and Film 93
Discussion and Activities 101
 Part Three. Art, History in the West 103
Introduction 104
Chapter 13. Ancient Art 107
Chapter 14. Classical Art 115
Chapter 15. Art in the Medieval Period 129
Chapter 16. Renaissance 141
Chapter 17. Baroque and Rococo 151
Chapter 18. Neo-Classicism 157
Chapter 19. Romanticism 163
Chapter 20. Realism 169
Chapter 21. Modern Art 175
Discussion and Activities 188

Part Four. Philippine Art 191

Chapter 22. Classifying Philippine Art 193
Discussion and Activities 212
Chapter 23. Reading in the Philippine Arts and Letters 215

Index 233
Bibliography 237
preface
At last, a textbook for Humanities students of MSU-IIT!

Through the efforts of author, Steven Patrick C. Fernandez, and in cooperation with the
MSU-IIT’s Department of English, this book aims to fill the lack of an accessible, inexpensive
textbook for students unfilled since the Humanities subject was offered in MSU-IIT in the 1980s.

Considering the importance placed on science and technology in this part of the
country, one can understand the dearth or paucity of such a textbook towards a total
development of students from diverse groups, religions and persuasions. And, only those who
realize that the person needs to understand himself, and the world around him through the
humanities, can this textbook be looked upon as a significant step in breaking the biases and/or
feelings of superiority or inferiority among the literate but, uneducated, for true education
endeavors to make ma keep in touch with the fascinating elements of life, enabling him to
decide what is important and what needs to be improved.

In 23 chapters along with a compilation of readings, this textbook introduces the

students to the various disciplines like philosophy, history, religion, architecture, literature and
the fine arts, among others, under the all-embracing subject – humanities. In other words, the
students read about, and experience for the first time, ideas, art works, artists, and places they
either have a vague idea of, or, have no notion of throughout the history of the world.

Commercialism and personal concerns seem to define the spirit of our age today and, in
a way, have diminished the appreciation of the fines things in life making most people the
poorer for it. It is with pride that the MSU-IIT has professors such as Fernandez who could
produce a humanities textbook to help create an atmosphere for research and publication to
benefits its students, leave a legacy worth the emulation of his colleagues, and contribute to the
prestige of the Institute.

To the students: enjoy this textbook in order for you to discover why works of art, for
instance, have continued to influence the world’s events and move many more to tears of
action to understand that, in reality, life and art, at some point merge because man must know
how to live in order to complete his journey as a human being on earth.

CHRISTINE F. GODINEZ-ORTEGA
November 17, 2009
Part one
THE HUMAN IMAGE
IN THE ARTS
 Man, Nature, & the
1
Humanities
This chapter discusses the nature of Man. Man’s history is illustrated by timelines
that show how he and his community grows, from his extended families to small
communities and to larger societies. Man’s quest for answers to fundamental
questions about Life and his attempt to control his environment becomes the impetus
for Man’s best creations.

The Humanities study the best that Man has created. Thousands of years
of Man’s interaction with nature and with his fellow men have produced creations
that witness Man’s quest to understand Life.
Man has attempt to explain phenomena around him. Through time, he
has come up with answers and insights. He has expressed his thoughts and feelings
about his conditions in his countless struggles to come to terms with living and his
world. In many ways, these expressions form some of his greatest achievements:
language, literature, history, art, music, and philosophy. We study these answers
and insights in the disciplines of the natural and social sciences.
These achievements form the Humanities (from homo, meaning man or
human), the collective disciplines which depict the human condition. These
disciplines which are studies that attempt to make sense of our world produced the
sum of all the knowledge that Man has produced. One branch of this knowledge is
Science that explains Life in an objective and empirical manner. Another branch is
the Arts that reflect Man’s impressions about his existence and the world around
him and which constitute the fine arts, philosophy, religion, and culture. These
entire disciplines embrace that study about Man we call the Humanities.
The Humanities, in revealing the vest that Man has produced, cover the
disciplines we now call the Liberal Arts that consist of the pure sciences, the social
sciences, the arts and letters, and many other disciplines that have sprung

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 from this great interest to learn more about Man.
Man needed to explain Nature and the world where he lived. He carefully
observed his world noting down what he saw. What he could not see he explained
intuitively using his feelings and intellect. Thus, Man evolved two general ways of
explaining the world, one from a scientific point and the other from an intuitive, creative
point.
The Sciences have their empirical methods of studying nature and reality, while
the Humanities interpreted life in creations we call the Arts – silos of a deeper awareness
of, knowledge about, and sensitivity to Man’s greatest thoughts and feelings.
The artists and the scholars, who study them and their creations, are called
“humanists”. These humanists possessed varied knowledge as Man was valued according
to the breadth of his knowledge in the Sciences and the Arts. They were the keepers of
the souls of cultures and nations. The Italians called the humanists the uomo universale of
the “universal man”. In its ranks were geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo,
Bernini, and Albert Einstein.

Why Study the Humanities?

We study the Humanities because we wish to know about Man’s greatest
achievements. Reviewing what these great men were and what they did to humanity, we
set them as models for our own lives. Their works become our inspirations. Through their
works, too, we learn about Humanity, that big world which we are a part of. The
achievements of great men make us appreciate how far human knowledge and creativity
can achieve.
Studying the Humanities shows us a lot about how Man thinks and feels. We
uncover Man’s nature. Man is inherently inquisitive. He is anxious and fearful, too. He
tries to understand the phenomena around him and in so doing attempts to give answers
to questions that he himself has raised about his condition.
Man – being rational, sensitive, and imaginative – is distinct from beasts because
of his capacity to think, feel, and muster the courage to ask questions. Being intelligent,
sensitive and expressive being, Man invokes his faculties to express what he thinks and
feels, and these expressions redound to enriching the community’s knowledge.
In appreciating the best of Man’s achievements particularly in his creative works,
we emulate both Man and his achievements. This knowledge gives us idea if the depths
that Mann has reached in seeking for answers to make the world less confusing to us.
Man’s works in the Humanities answer many of the questions we seek about Life, the
most compelling being: Who am I? Why am I here?
Asking questions, in a way, leads us to seek for higher meaning in life than that
state where we are in now. The Humanities allows us to experience a state beyond our
routines of eating, sleeping, and working for a living. We learn about appreciating the
world around us. We become sensitive to our environment. We sense how nature
embraces us. We connect our lives to a higher cosmic order that which gods, spirits, and
the supernatural occupy. In seeking

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 For a higher state of living, we seek for the ideal and, in a sense, for
perfection.
See how much knowledge we have acquired from
the time primitive man discovered fore. Primitive
man had little solutions to the problems that plagued
him. He was beset with disease, famine, drought,
and the dangers of a hostile environment. Through
the ages, Man found answers and these answers
enlighten us now. The knowledge that men and
women through the ages have bequeathed to modern man has not only produced in us a
better understanding of Humanity but has made us become better humans, as well
Man has studied the Humanities for thousands of years. The collective knowledge that the
human race has produced has given as a far greater understanding of our world. Although
these answers about our existence are not in any way complete, still, the Humanities has given
Mankind the directions to continue to survive and to improve its present states of living.
Besides studying the Humanities in the classroom, we can experience the Humanities by
watching performances like plays, concerts, and recitals. We can attend art exhibits, visit the
museum, watch films, experience the culture of an indigenous community, or hands-on create
our own works of art.

Early Man and his World

Early man may have been so insecure, what with the hostile occurrences around him.
There were natural events which he could not explain nor could he control. He needed to
provide food for himself and his family to survive. He took meat from wild animals like boars
and bulls because he had not yet discovered gathering and keeping grain. He was first a hunter
before he became a farmer. It will take many more generations to come before he would
domesticate animals and learn to plant for food.
Animals then were a lot fiercer and bigger that they are today. Worse, man only had a
sharp stones tied to long poles to kill the animals that were often the more successful hunters
of men. To protect themselves better ancient hunters banded themselves to make their
hunting expeditions successful, but even then, these expeditions often ended with many of the
men being killed.
Deep problems compounded Man’s early efforts to survive. Men had to hunt regularly as
meat could not be stores for long periods. Winter was particularly difficult. But having the
ability to survive, man devised means to control what he
needed to control. Art played a vital role in these efforts.
Wanting to master control over his hunting trips and the
animals, he drew images of the beasts in the walls of his
cave homes in the hope that by capturing the spirits of
these beasts (through ritual), he would weaken them for
easy prey.
Communities were small then, perhaps consisting of
only a few families that sought shelter in caves naturally
formed in the side of cliffs. The birth, therefore, of a baby was a significant.

bison figure from the Altamira cave

5 Northern Spain, c. 15,000 B.C.
 Venus of Willendorf

event since another person meant an increase of the population of the extended
family, ensuring its survival and promising the prospect of more help for labor and
hunting. That was the responsibility of women delineated to ensure the progeny of
the clan.
Primitive man had no inkling that sex resulted in procreation. The act of
birth was attributed to fertility goddesses. When archaeologists discovered what
was perhaps the most famous fertility icon of prehistoric man in Western Europe,
they endearingly called it the “Venus of Willendorf” (“Venus” was the Roman
goddess of eroticism). The WIllendorf icon had swollen breasts and an open vulva
clearly suggesting a pregnant woman. People believed that the goddesses of
fertility decided whether or not a mother should not bear a child, so that
communities offered appeasements and gifts to the goddesses to ensure progeny.
Offerings were done in rituals, and these offerings were events that cemented Man’s relationship with
his deities. Man communicated to the supernatural world through expressions that facilitated what he sought
for from forms were perhaps the first creative expressions. Meanwhile, some men had the greater powers than
others to communicate with the gods. They were the shamans, the first artists sought by the community to
“talk” to the gods, because these baylans and baylanes were themselves mediums with some access to the
supernatural world. They, too, had the craft to use chants, music, and dance to facilitate this process of prayer.
The amusing title of a movie The Gods Must Be Crazy suggests truth that Man often believed that the
predicaments in their lives were the gods’ doings. A whimsical god may punish a peeve with sickness or a whole
community with famine. Bounty was rewarded to the gods’ favorites. Many great Literatures narrate Man’s
endless relations with the gods.
Truly, gods and religion played important role in the lives of early societies, as they still do today.
Worship was manifested in sculptures, music and dances. Art was a part of religion. If religion is intrinsic in
Man’s life, then Art, being intrinsic to religion, is as much a part of Man as religion is. Art, therefore, facilitated
the needs of Man. Art was not just some appendage to civilization. Art, integrated with religion, was a necessary
tool to survive. The use of Art in religion proves that Man survived through Art.

Humanities as a Disciple
We study the Humanities in relation to how people appreciate art. Appreciation varies among cultures.
But differences in appreciation among the different cultures are distinct only in the degrees of what beauty is
and how beauty is perceived because human concerns like compassion, family, survival, and love are universal
and common to all humans. Humankind will always perceive harmony as beautiful and chaos as ugly. Physical
deformity is ugly as a balanced body structure is beautiful; these are values that cultures share.

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 Values define the appreciation of beauty. The study of beauty and
its appreciation is called Aesthetics. Aesthetics, influenced by
values nurtures by cultures, evolve from long interactions of art
works and the people who perceive these works. Communication
value beauty, in many instances, because beauty works for their
good. The positive is associated with beauty.
There are standards, and most often, the standards of
beauty we study are based on that set by Western traditions
which have roots in Greece and Rome. Asia has its own
conventions of beauty different from those of the West. China and
India set the standards for great civilizations. These differences
are largely the results of the varying lifestyle influenced by
religion, history, philosophy, politics, economics, and technology.
The sophistication in cultural expressions in the arts, particularly
in literature and poetry, measure the greatness cultures have achieved. In fact, language and literature
are central topics in the Humanities.
In the West, we often refer to classical antiquity, namely the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures,
as a backbone of the Humanities. The Classics also refer to major traditions in the Indian Vedas and
Upanishads, the Chinese writings of Confucius, Lao-tse and Chuang-tzu, the ancient Hammurabi Code,
the Gilgamesh Epic from Mesopotamia, as well as the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
The study of the Humanities can be traced to ancient Greece where it became a basis of broad
education for the citizens. Today, this idea of a “broad” education refers to the pre-major “liberal arts”
preparation (or general education) for college students before they specialize in their degree courses.
In any case, we absorb a holistic learning studying the Humanities because, through this study,
we recognize all the facets that have made Man the human being that he is today. By studying the
Humanities, we pry open Man’s long story from the time he hunted beasts for food to this time when he
meets difficult challenges to save his earth. The Humanities seats us in the ringside section of a long
great spectacle where the protagonists engage in various battles amid a setting called the world.

Another “Venus” goddess is the Venus of Laussell, a 20,000-year old 18-inch (1 ½ feet) high limestone bas-relief sculpture of a nude female figure.
The figure holds a curved bison horn in its right hand. It was founded on a sheltered wall of limestone in the Dordogne Valley in France. Specialists believe
that the horn symbolizes both the crescent moon and the Universal Vulva, the source of all life. The horn is incised with thirteen notches, corresponding to
the 13 lunar months in a year. Researchers also say that these marks represent the menstrual cycles in one year. Like the later Willendorf icon that
represents fertility, the Laussel figure with large breasts and vulva has her hand on her womb.

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