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Art appreciation: Creativity, imagination, and expression

 It takes an artist to make an art. One may perceive beauty on a daily basis.
 However, not every beautiful thing can be seen or experienced may truly be called work of art.
 Art is a product of man’s creativity, imagination and expression.
 Not everyone can be considered an artist, but all spectators of art.
 We are able to distinguish what is fine and beautiful from what it is not and what is good quality
and from poor.
 This gives us a role in the field of art appreciation.

Art appreciation as a way of life

 “The role of art as a creative work is to depict the world in a completely different light
perspective” – Jean Paul Sartre
 Each of art work beholds beauty in its own kind, the kind that artist sees and wants the reviewer
to perceive.
 More often than not, people are blind to see beauty and only those who have developed a fine
sense of appreciation can experience and see the art in a way the artist did.
 Hence, refining one’s ability to appreciate arts allows him to deeply understand the purpose of
an art work and recognize the beauty it possesses.
 In cultivating an appreciation of art, one should also exercise and develop his taste for things
that are fine and beautiful.
 This allow individual to make intelligent choices and decisions in acquiring necessities and
luxuries, knowing what gives better value for time or money while taking into consideration the
aesthetic and practical value.
 Learning to appreciate art no matter what vocation or profession you have, will lead to a fuller
and more meaningful life.

When can we say that something is creative?

 When we have not seen anything like it


 When it is out of the ordinary
 What it is not just a copy or imitation of someone’s work. THERE’S ORIGINALITY.

Art as a product of imagination, imagination as a product of art

 “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know
and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there will ever be to know
and understand.” – Albert Einstein
 Imagination is not constrained by walls of the norm, but goes beyond that.
 Through imagination, one is able to craft something bold, something new, and something better
in the hopes of creating something that will stimulate change.
 In artist’s mind sits vast gallery of art works
 An art work does not need to be a real thing, but can be something that is imaginary.
 However, something imaginary does not necessarily mean it cannot be called art. Artists use
their imagination that gives birth to reality through creation.
 In the same way that imagination produces art, art also inspires imagination.
Art as an Expression

 “What an artist does to an emotion is not to induce it, but express it. Through expression, he is
able to explore his emotions and at the same time, create something beautiful out of them.” –
Robin George Collingwood.
 Expressing emotions is different from describing emotions
 This makes people’s art not a reflection if what us outside or external to them, but a reflection
of their inner selves.

Visual arts

 Creation that falls under this category are those that appeals to the sense of sight and are
mainly visual in nature.
 Artists produce visual arts driven by their desire to reproduce things that they seen in the way
that they perceived them.
 There are also other artistic disciplines that also involve a visual aspect, such as performance
arts, theater, and applied arts.
 Some mediums of visual arts include paintings, drawings, letterings, printing, sculpture, digital
imaging.

Film

 Films refers to the art of putting together successions of still images in order to create illusions
of movement.
 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)
 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.

Performance Art

 Performance 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.
 Elements or performance art:
- Time
- Where the performance took place
- The performer’s body
- Relationship between the audience and performer(s)

Poetry performance

 Poetry is an art from where the artist expresses his emotions not by using paint, charcoal, or
camera but expresses through words.
 Those words are carefully selected to exhibit clarity and beauty and to stimulate strong
emotions of joy, anger, love, sorrow among others.
 It uses word’s emotional, musical, and spatial values that go beyond its literal meaning to
narrate emphasize, argue, or convince.
 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.
 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.
 Important elements:
- Plan
- Construction
- Design
 Building should embody these three important elements if they wish to merit the title
architecture.

Dance

 Dance is a series if movements that follows the rhythm of the music accompaniment.
 Dancing is a creative art form that allows people to freely express themselves.

Literary Art

 Artists who practice literary arts use words to express themselves and communicate emotions
to the readers.
 Simply becoming a writer does not make one a literary artist.
 Literary arts go beyond the usual professional, academic, journalistic and other technical forms
of writing.
 It focuses on writing using 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 by William Shakespeare
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Sain-Excupery.

Theater

 Theater uses live performers to present accounts or imaginary events before a live audience.
 Theater art performance usually follows a script, though they should not be confused with
literary arts.

Applied Arts

 Applied arts is incorporating elements of style and design to everyday items with the aim of
increasing their aesthetic value.
 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.

Chapter 2: Art and Mathematics

Mathematics in the Art of Leonardo Da Vinci

Though famous for his artistic works, Leonardo da Vinci considered himself more a scientist than an
artist. He saw everything, including his drawings and paintings through the eyes of mathematics.
 
“The merit of painting lies in the exactness   of reproduction. Painting is a science and   all sciences are
based on mathematics.”
 
His work illustrates that art and science are not diverging paths, instead, they work together to create
beautiful masterpieces.

  Mona Lisa and the Golden Ratio


  Vitruvian Man and the geometric problem of “squaring a circle”

  Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper and the mathematics of perspective

Leonardo Da Vinci Mathematics

Perspective

Da Vinci applied the mathematical principles of linear perspective in his works.


The Three elements required for linear perspective are parallel lines, horizon line, vanishing point.

The Golden Ratio/Divine Proportion


The golden ratio is a well-known mathematical concept.
Pacioli was a mathematician who wrote the book Divine
Proportion. This mathematical concept appears in
Leonardo`s works such as the Last Supper and the Mona
Lisa. He developed a deep interest in geometry as a result of his collaboration with Luca Pacioli

Geometric Shape
-He developed a deep interest in geometry as a result of his collaboration with Luca Pacioli on his book
"De divina proportione.” Da Vinci created sixty illustrations of geometric shapes basing them on Pacioli's
writings and models.
MATH & VITRUVIAN MAN

 The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci ranks among art's most famous works. It is a sketch of
the perfect human form through the use of mathematics.

 Man is a symbol of God’s greatest creation. 4 fingers make 1 palm, and 4 palms make 1 foot, 6
palms make 1 cubit, 4 cubits make a man’s height, 4 cubits make one pace and 24 palms make a
man. 

 This sketch has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the renaissance.

 
Proportion: Da Vinci’s “ – Math

• Leonardo DaVinci combined art and science to advance both in a remarkable way.

• In 1487, his drawing of the "Vitruvian Man" showed the relationship between the human body and
geometry. His work captures "proportion".

Vitruvian Man
• The Vitruvian Man helped us see the relation and proportion of the entire.

Donald Duck Teaches the Golden Mean

Donald Duck's Mathematical Magic Trick In the short animated film "Donald Duck in Math Magic
Land(1959)," Donald Duck is shown in a magical land full of math principles and "The True Spirit of
Adventure." Donald was led by the Spirit through many daily applications of mathematics discovered by
"Eggheads," as Donald affectionately referred to them. The math behind the pentagram, or what we
know as the five-point star, was one example taught there. The "Golden Rectangle," or a rectangle
whose sides form the "Golden Mean" ratio, is contained within the pentagram.

The Golden Mean is a special ratio equal to 1:1.61803399, which is considered to be the ratio of
beauty. The Ancient Greeks used this ratio in Golden Rectangles found in many of their architectural
designs, such as the Parthenon. In later years, the Golden Ratio was used in even more architectural and
artistic designs, such as the Cathedral of Notre Dame and the Mona Lisa painting, as we learned in class.

Another idea we explored in class was infinity. It refers to something that continues indefinitely.
The Golden Rectangle was discovered in the pentagram and may be created in an infinite number of
ways using the pentagram's elements. In the Golden Mean ratio, the two short parts combined created
the longer component when the pentagram was deconstructed and the pieces were reassembled
according to their lengths. This demonstrates how algebra is used in real-world situations.

Chapter 3: Cultural Relativism in Aesthetics

Aesthetic relativism

is the judgment of the philosophical view that beauty is relative to a different individual or culture.
Therefore, this justifies that there are no universal criteria for beauty.
 Universal criteria for Beauty
 22 000 BC: Venus of Willenford. Fertility figure, a Mother Goddess
1700: Aphrodite. Greek goddess of love and beauty.
 1850's: Era of Corset. cinched in their waists with tight-fitting undergarments.
 1920: Tall women with long arms. 1950: Marilyn Monroe, thin hourglass figure
 1960: Preppy or Hippie look1990: Supermodel Era. (1) Celebrated if they look athletic. (2) The
media was encouraging women to be thin.
 2000’s to 2021. (1) Healthy skin error. (2) Kardashian Jenner skinny but not too skinny

Cultural Relativism

Right or Wrong

 Culture-Specific
 Moral and Immoral
 Cultural Relativists
 Diversity of Culture
 Cultural Relativism - Ethical Relativism

Foot Binding in China

This was the Chinese custom of breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls in order to change
their size and shape.

Origin of Foot Binding

 Started the 10th century


 Yao Niang, in order to represent the shape of the new moon,
 Was a dancer and emperor's, favorite concubine
 Emperor Li Yu was impressed by the dance of Yao Niang could dance just with her toes while
doing the Lotus Dance.
 Other women started to imitate the distinct shape of Yao Niang’s feet.

Purposes of Foot Binding in China

 Fashion
 Represent social status for women
 Ideal Feminity
 Shows the family wealth of a woman
 Binding feet of a certain size became translated into a type of currency
 3 inches called Golden Lotus (most desirable foot size)
 4 inches called Silver Lotus5 inches called Iron Lotus
 Foot binding was outlawed in 1912.

Traditional African Murci Lip Plates

 Lake Turkana and the Lower Omo Valley in Southern Euthopia


 The lip plate became he distinguishing characteristic of Mursi and Suri Tribes
 The mursi and suri are the tribes who wears wooden discs or plates

Significance of Lip Plates

 Lip plates as an expression of female maturity and assign of marriageable and childbearing age
 Lip plates tradition symbolizes women’s strength and self-esteem.
 The lip plate is used for tribes’ distinction.

How are lips stretched and plates inserted?

 Performed 6 months to a year before a young girl is to marry.


 Usually performed by the Mother or any women relative of a child.

Kayan Neck Ring

 Lives a tribe of Karenni people called Kayan Lahwi


 Young girls begin to wear rings when they are around 5 years old
 They were rings around their neck to keep them safe from tiger attacks.
 This idea of a stretched neck is an illusion in reality.
 The neck-stretching process can cause serious damage to the collar bones and ribs as well. It
also changes the shape of the rib cage and causes health issues.
 The women who wear brass coils to stretch their necks cannot bend their heads easily. Their
longer necks do mess up with their vocal cords and make their voices hollow-sounding.
 Nowadays, many local and western tourists crowd the long-neck villages of Kayan tribes to
explore their lives and ancient traditions.
 This beautiful Kayan tribe is literally caught between two countries and heading towards a bleak
future.

Chapter 4: The Concept of Beauty

Early Theories of Beauty

Objectivity of Beauty

 For Plato, beauty is an intrinsic quality of the “thing” itself, independent of any human
judgment. “The permanent property that belongs to all beautiful objects, regardless of whether
someone admires it or not."

Subjectivity of Beauty

 For Davide Humane, Beauty does not lie in “things “but is entirely subjective, a matter of
feelings and emotion.
 For Immanuel Kant, Aesthetic judgment is based on feelings. (Feeling of Pleasure).

Different Concepts of Beauty


(A) Classical conception
Beauty consists of an arrangement of integral parts into a coherent whole, according to
proportion, harmony, symmetry, and similar notions
(B) Fibonacci Sequence
In Middle Ages, proportions and numerical ratios were regarded as fundamental qualities of
items

Ancient Roman Architect Vitruvius Characterization of Classical Conception:

(A) Order
balanced adjustment of the details of the work separately, and as to the whole, the
arrangement of the proportion with a view to a symmetrical result
(B) Proportion
attained when the details of the work are of height suitable to their breadth and of a breadth
suitable to their length
(C) Symmetry
the correspondence of each given detail to the form of the design as a whole

Notable Persons:

 Aristotle
 Vitrivius
 Thomas Aquinas
 Euclid

Idealist Conception:
 Beauty is conceived as perfect unity, or indeed as the principle of unity itself Plotinus equates
beauty with formedness as the source of unity among disparate things

Shaftesbury's Three Levels of Beauty:

(1) What God Makes

(2) What human beings make from nature

(3) What makes even the maker of such things as us

Beauty is a route from the sensuous and particular to the Absolute and to freedom, from finitude to the
infinite

Notable Persons:

 Plato
 Plotinus
 Shaftesbury
 Schiller
 Hegel
Love and longing

 As per Edmund Burke, Beauty is that quality or those qualities in bodies by which cause love or
some passion similar to it."
 As per Sartwell, Beauty as “the object of longing” and characterizes longing as intense and
unfulfilled desire.
 "Pleasure and pain are not only necessary attendants of beauty and deformity, but constitute
their very essence."
 As per Epicurus, "When one senses beauty, a feeling of pleasure is involved."

Use and usefulness

 Something is beautiful if it serves its practical use.


 As per Xenophon, Things are beautiful only in relation to the uses for which they are intended or
to which they are properly applied
 As per Ananda Coomaraswamy, "A beautiful work of art or craft expresses as well as serves its
purpose."

Ugliness of Beauty

 The antithesis of beauty seen in things that are discordant, both literally and figuratively, or
dysfunctional or disfigured.
 Beautiful and ugliness are not opposites, but aspects of the same thing.
 People only enjoy the ephemeral deliciousness of beauty if we have an active concept of
ugliness.

The Loss of Beauty in the Modern Art Scene

 "Beauty is being lost in themodern world, particularly inthe fields of art andarchitecture." –
Roger Scruton
 Book published by Roger is “Why Beauty Matter?”
 Art sailed in two directions:
(1) cult of ugliness
(2) cult of utility
 Beauty stopped being important as art turned to disturb and to break moral taboos.
 Art, in modern scene, became a slave of consumer culture, turning its back to beauty.

Chapter 5: Arts and Education

10 Salient Studies on the Arts in Education

 A 2002 report by the Arts Education Partnership revealed that schoolchildren exposed to drama,
music and dance are often more proficient at reading, writing, and math.

 The 2006 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum study on art education showed a link between arts
education and improved literacy skills.
 In 2007, Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland published a study stating the arts don't actually improve
academic performance, but it shouldn't matter.
 A 2005 report by the Rand Corporation called "A Portrait of the Visual Arts" argues that art
education does more than just give students a creative outlet. It can actually help connect them
to the larger world, ultimately improving community cohesion.
 Teachers and students alike benefit from schools that have strong art climates, a 1999 study
called "Learning In and Through the Arts" demonstrated.
 The Center for Arts Education published a report in 2009 that suggests arts education may
improve graduation rates.
 A 2011 study called "Reinvesting in Arts Education" found that integrating arts with other
subjects can help raise achievement levels.
 A study of Missouri public schools in 2010 found that greater arts education led to fewer
disciplinary infractions and higher attendance, graduation rates and test scores.
 In "Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts and the Brain," Johns Hopkins researchers shared findings
showing that arts education can help rewire the brain in positive ways.
 A 2009 survey, part of the "Nation's Report Card: Arts 2008" report, found that access to arts
education opportunities hasn't changed much in a decade.

Aesthetic Development in Higher Education: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue

 Aesthetic literacy is related dimension of aesthetic education that is deeply connected to


aesthetic awareness. The term “literacy” is used intentionally as it refers to the
functionality associated with spoken and written language proficiency (Gale, 2005). 
 Aesthetic literacy moves beyond a basic skills inventory into development of knowledge and
potential, more centered on imagination and growth, where the learner can be open to wider
possibilities.
 Aesthetic literacy provides an important lens on experience, a way of seeing that transcends the
instrumental and disciplinary approaches where we are able to ‘learn from aesthetically
rendered lives what words, paradoxically, can never say’ (Eisner, 1985: 35).
 Gale (2005) argues that “Aesthetic literacy is not an answer to a question or a solution to a
problem, but it is a vital capacity and skill with which to observe, imagine, and engage with all
that surrounds.” (p. 4) 
 In teacher education it is appropriate that we address concepts of feeling, interpretation,
observation, ambiguity and creative thinking, just as we do in theschool curriculum. 
 Aesthetic education provides us with another tool, skill oranother way of seeing the world, their
culture and own lives (Gale, 2005). These are Vitally important skills for citizens of the
21st century. And as such, there is a similarly strong  argument for these modes of cognition to
be addressed in tertiary settings outside of teacher education. 
 A student’s learning experience can also be enhanced if they see its connection to the human
condition. There are plenty of challenges associated with the inclusion of aesthetic learning in
higher education, but they are not without solutions. The path towards great aesthetic
engagement in higher education can be found in collaborative partnerships that share
knowledge between disciplines. This, along with a little imagination, will help to perpetuate the
joy of learning about our world.
Six Good Reasons for Advocating the Importance of Arts in School,

1. First reason

Is that the arts boost the self-confidence of children who are behind in mastery of reading and
arithmetic. 
Today’s children live in an economy where a high school diploma is absolutely necessary and a college
degree advantageous for success.

This was not the case a century or two earlier. Neither Benjamin Franklin nor Abraham Lincoln had more
than two years of formal schooling.

2. Second reason

A second reason for an arts/music curriculum, which has a more recent history, may help middle-class
children who have been infantilized by over protective parents excessively concerned with their grades
and talent profile.

3. Third reason 

A third advantage to an arts/music program, which might help all children, is based on the fact that the
mind uses three distinct forms, or tools, to acquire, store, and communicate knowledge.

The balance among the three has changed over time. For most of the first 100,000 years of human
presence, the most important knowledge was contained in motor skills, such as planting, harvesting,
molding, building, cooking, and hunting. 

4. Fourth reason 

A fourth advantage lies with the opportunity to provide all American youth with some values they feel
warrant consistent loyalty. Most youth from earlier generations were relatively more certain of the
ethical values they believed had to be honored under all usual circumstances. I was certain as an
adolescent that loyalty, perseverance, and work that would benefit humanity were ideals that
were immune from challenge.

5. Fifth reason

Art Makes Us Happier

The arts can make your kids smarter; they can make you stronger, but they’re not done yet—they can
also make you feel better too.

6. Sixth reason 

Art and music provide opportunities for all children to experience and express feelings and conflicts that
are not yet fully conscious and cannot be expressed coherently in words.

Chapter 6: Arts and Psychology

Gestalt Principles
are principles/laws of human perception that describe how humans’ group similar elements, recognize
patterns and simplify complex images when we perceive objects.

German wordfor “unified whole”

First Gestalt Principles (1920)

 Max Wertheimer
 Kurt Koffka
 Wolfgang Kohler

Gestalt theory seeks to answer three main questions:

1. What is an object?

2. What is it doing?

3. Where is it going?

 According to Barnes, Gestalt theory claims visual perceptions the outcome of arranging visual
elements or shapes into groups.

The Designer’s Guide to Gestalt Theory

(1) SIMILARITY/ INVARIANCE


Repetition of colors, patterns, or shapes.
(2) CONTINUATION/CONTINUITY
•Continuously Plotted
•Movement of objects
(3) PRAGNANZ
• It creates illusion.
•Shows how our eyes can simplify complex shapes into simple shapes.
(4) CLOSURE/ REIFICATION
•Design technique that uses the human eye’s tendency to see closed shapes.
•Use cut or half of geometric shapes.
(5) PROXIMITY/ EMERGENCE
•Proper kerning helps readers make up the words.
•It creates dimension.
(6) FIGURE-GROUND/ MULTI-STABILITY
•Area: The viewer’s mind mostly sees the smallest element in the entire design as the figure and
sees the larger one as the ground or background.
•Convexity: Convex elements are related to figures.
(7) SYMMETRY
Figures that have mirrored or those that appear to be reflections of each other.

The Relationship between Art and Psychology

SIGMUND FREUD
• First to use the psychological application of art
• Introduced the psychological effects of art masterpieces to audiences

• Emphasizes that Art Instrument is useful for psychoanalytic analysis of personality

• Drawing therapy for emotionally disordered children

What is Psychology?

•Understanding the soul or mind

•Answers behavioral reasons

•Practical science

•Study of modern human complexities

What is Art?
•Expression of meaning, values and principles

•Art therapy is the use of art, visual and audio materials and methods to develop identity and
personality (William James)

Psychology of Art

•Interdisciplinary subject that deals with perception, understanding, art characteristics, and its
productions

•Divided into structural and environmental psychology

•Art psychology concept of sympathy and empathy (Lipez, early20thcentury)

Famous Philosophers and Scholars Who had a Positive Views Towards Art

 Wolflin – Architecture
 Veringer – Expressionism of Art
 Malraux – Book of “Art of Psychology”.
 Dewey – Art as Experience (1934)
 Barkan – Contributions to Art Education
 Gestalts – Growth of Art Psychology
 Arnheims – Toward of Psychology of art
 Bjed – Artworks of Psychology of Arts

Art in Relation to Psychology

• It is a ladder toward reality in condition laid on faith wall.

• A large portion of art is in relation to pen and speech known in psychology as verbal and literary
intelligence

• It prevents human beings from social deviations.

• Art invites men to social life.


Present Art Results Holds a Very Close Relationship with Men’s Soul

• Developed an academic perceptional discipline

•Structural psychology considers characteristics of mind while environmental psychology affects an


artist’s soul

•Art indicates a cultural continuity

Arts by Several Methods Helps Man’s Relaxation and Creativity

• It prepares chances for conformity of eyes and hands

• It could be an opportunity for sharing motives, and analysis in visual perception

• It causes reduction and even treatment of behavioral and mental disorders.

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