Cave Paintings

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.

Assumptions of Art
ART IS UNIVERSAL.

Literature has provided key words of art.

Among the most popular ones being taught in
school are the two Greek epics, the Iliad and the
Odyssey.
The Sanskrit pieces Mahabharata and
Ramayana are also staples in the field.

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.
 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 listen to a kundiman or perform folk
dances, we still enjoy the way our Filipino
ancestor whiled away their time in the past.

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.
Some people say that art is art for its intrinsic
(essential) 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 IS NOT NATURE.

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.

One can only imagine the story of the five blind

men who one day argue against each other on
what an 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.

ART INVOLVES EXPERIENCE.

 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.

According to 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 famous story about someone who adores
Picasso goes something like this: “Years ago,
Gertrude Stein was asked why she bought the
pictures of the unknown artist Picasso. ‘I like to
look at them,’ said Miss Stein”

Finally, one should also underscore that every

experience with art accompanied by some
emotion. One either likes or dislikes, agrees or
disagrees that a work of art is beautiful.
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.

 The word “art” comes from the

ancient Latin, ars which means a
“craft or specialized form of skill, like
carpentry or smithing or surgery”
(Collingwood, 1938)

 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.
 It was during the seventeenth
century when the problem and idea of
aesthetics.
 The fine arts would come to mean
“not delicate or highly skilled arts but
‘beautiful’ art” (Collingwood, 1938).