LESSON 1

What Is Art: Introduction and Assumption

Learning Objectives
By the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
1. Understand the role of humanities and arts in man's attempt at fully realizing
his end:
2. Clarify misconceptions about art:
3. Characterize the assumptions of arts; and

Art is something that is perennially around us. Some people may deny
having to do with the arts, but it is indisputable that life presents us with many
forms of and opportunities for communion with the arts. A bank manager
choosing what tie to wear together with his shirt and shoes, a politician shuffling
her music track while comfortably seated on her car looking for her favorite song,
a student marveling at the intricate designs of a medieval cathedral during his
field trip, and a market vendor cheering for her bet in a dance competition on a
noontime TV program all manifest concern for values that are undeniably, despite
tangentially, artistic.
Despite the seemingly overflowing
instances of arts around people, one
still finds the need to see more and
experience more, whether consciously
or unconsciously. One whose exposure
to music is only limited to one genre
finds it lacking not to have been
exposed to more. One, whose idea of a
cathedral is limited to the locally
available ones, finds enormous joy in
seeing other prototypes in Europe.
Plato had the sharpest foresight when
he discussed in the Symposium Figure 1.A Medieval Cathedral

that beauty, the object of any love, truly progresses. As one moves through life,
one locates better, more beautiful objects of desire (Scott, 2000). One can never
be totally content with what is just before him. Human beings are drawn toward
what is good and ultimately, beautiful.
 This lesson is about this yearning for the beautiful, the appreciation of the all-
consuming beauty around us, and some preliminary clarifications on
assumptions that people normally hold about art.

Let's Get Started

In the first column of the table below, list down your most striking
encounters with arts. On the second column, explain why you think each
encounter is an experience with art
My Encounters with Arts Why?

Let's Get Down to Business

Why Study the Humanities?

For as long as man existed in this planet, he has cultivated the land, altered
the conditions of the fauna and the flora, in order to survive. Alongside these
necessities, man also marked his place in the world through his works. Through
his bare hands, man constructed infrastructures that tended to his needs, like
his house. He sharpened swords and spears. He employed fire in order to melt
gold. The initial meaning of the word "art" has something to do with all these
craft.
 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 its 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 the fine arts
and the useful arts. The fine arts would come to mean “not delicate or highly
skilled arts, but 'beautiful' arts" (Collingwood, 1938). This is something more akin
to what is now considered art.
“The humanities 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 Figure 2. Cave Paintings
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,

4
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.

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 lliad 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 itis 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
Figure 3. Ibong Adarna Figure 3. Ibong Adarna

Figure 3. Ibong Adarna

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. 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. Is that so?
Paul Cézanne, a French painter, painted a scene from reality entitled Well and
Grinding Wheel in the Forest of the Château Noir. The said scene is inspired by a
real scene in a forest around the Château Noir area near Aix in Cézanne's native
Provence. Comparing the two, one can see that Cézanne's landscape is quite
different from the original scene. Cézanne 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 a 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 fiye 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.

Figure 4. The Elephant and the Blind

Once this point has been made, a student of humanities 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 “[all 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
Figure 5. Pablo Picasso
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 see the actual sculpture.
In order to know Beyoncé'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. 'l 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 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 judgment. 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. Feelings and emotions are concrete proofs
that the artwork has been experiences.
Let’s Wrap It Up
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 must be foremost, a perceiver who is directly in
touch with art.

Let's Work On This

Answer the following questions as precisely yet as thoroughly as possible.

1. If you were an artist, what kind of artist would you be?

2. Why is art not nature?