CHAPTER 1

ASSUMPTIONS
AND NATURE OF
ART

Group 1
OLHUM001
 TOPIC OUTLINE
• PURPOSES AND FUNCTIONS OF ART
What is ART?

Visual Arts
What is ART?
• Art is an expression of our thoughts,
emotions, institutions and desires.

• The word ART comes from the Latin word

"ars" which means a “craft or specialized
form of skill” (Collingwood, 1938).
PURPOSES AND
FUNCTIONS OF ART
✓ Functions of Art
• The human need for expression
• The social need for display, ✓ Functions of an artist
celebration, and communication • Create places for human purpose
• The physical needs for functional • Create extraordinary version of ordinary object
objects • Record & commemorate
✓ Why Study Art? • Tangible form to the unknown
• It helps to make sense of lives and • Form to feeling and ideas
identify lives of others. • See the world in new ways
• Expression
• Social Values
• Human Intelligence
ASSUMPTIONS
OF ART
 ART IS ART INVOLVES
UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE
• Art has always been • Art is man's expression of • Unlike fields of
timeless and universal, his reception of nature. knowledge that involve
spanning generations and Art is man's way of data, art is known by
continents through and interpreting nature. experiencing. A work of
through. “An art is not art that cannot be
good because it is old, ART IS NOT abstracted from actual
but old because it is NATURE doing in order to know
good” (Dudley et al., what an artwork is, we
1960). have to sense it, and see
or hear it.
VISUAL ARTS
• is a modern but imprecise umbrella term for a
broad category of art which includes number of
artistic disciplines from various sub-categories.
FINE ARTS
- it belongs to the general category of
visual arts.

DRAWING
- defined as the linear realization of visual
objects, concepts, emotions, and fantasies
including symbols and even abstract forms.
FINE ARTS
PAINTING
- it consists of the arrangement of shapes,
lines, colours, tones, and textures in a two-
dimensional surface, this creating an
aesthetic image.

PRINTMAKING
- it is concerned with the production of
images by varying methods of replication
onto paper, parchment, fabric or other
supports.
SCULPTURE
- the most enduring and arguably the
greatest form of fine art known to man.
FINE ARTS
MANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATIONS
- a manuscript in which the text is
supplemented with such decoration as
initials, borders (marginalia) and
miniature illustrations.
BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS
- an illustrations is a drawing, painting or
printed work of art which explains,
clarifies, illuminates, visually represents,
or merely decorates a written text.
CALLIGRAPHY
- the art of giving form to signs in an
expressive, harmonious, and skillful
manner.
ARCHITECTURE
- the process and the product of
planning, designing and constructing
buildings or any other structures.
 DRAWING PAINTING

PRINTMAKING SCULPTURE
 GRAPHIC ART MANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATIONS

BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS CALLIGRAPHY

ARCHITECTURE
CONTEMPORARY ARTS
- art produced within "our lifetime, recognizing
that lifetimes and life spans vary.

I. Assemblage
- form of three-dimensional visual art whose
compositions are formed from everyday items, usually
called "found objects" (objets trouvés)
 CONTEMPORARY ARTS
II. Collage
- Describes a composition made up of a
variety of assorted materials.
III. Conceptual Art
- modern form of contemporary art which
gives priority to an idea presented by visual
means that are themselves secondary to the
idea.
IV. Installation
- Installation art is a relatively new genre of
contemporary art - practiced by an
increasing number of postmodernist artists
- which involves the configuration or
"installation" of objects in a space, such as
a room or warehouse.
V. Happenings
- is a form of avant-garde art
-a type of creative expression, closely associated
with performance art.
VI. Performance Art
- is typically intensely theatrical, often taking
acting and movement to extremes of expression
and endurance not permitted in the theatre.
VII. Photography
- Known also as "photographic art", "artistic
photography"
- it refers to an imprecise category of
photographs, created in accordance with the
creative vision of the cameraman.
CONTEMPORARY ARTS
VIII. Video Art
- The genre known as video art, is a new
type of contemporary art, and a medium
of expression commonly seen in
Installations, but also as a stand-alone
art form.
IX. Animation Art
- Animation (from the Latin word, animare,
to breathe life into) is the visual art of
making a motion picture from a series of
still drawings.
X. Land Art
- A form of contemporary art, known also
as Earthworks, or Earth Art. - determined
to heighten public awareness of Man's
relationship with the natural world by
intervening in the landscape in a series of
thought-provoking constructions
XI. Graffiti
- One of the most radical contemporary art
movements, "graffiti art" (also called "Street
Art", "Spraycan Art", "Subway Art" or "Aerosol
Art") - commonly refers to decorative imagery
applied by paint or other means to buildings,
public transport or other property.
 Assemblage Collage

Conceptual Art Installation

Happenings Performance Art

Photography Video Art

Animation Art Land Art

Graffiti
DECORATIVE ARTS
- are arts or crafts whose object is the design and
manufacture of objects that are both beautiful
and functional. It includes most of the arts
making objects for the interiors of buildings, and
interior design, but not usually architecture.
CERAMICS
- is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant
and corrosion-resistant materials made by
shaping and then firing an inorganic,
nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high
temperature.
MOSAIC ART
- decoration of a surface with designs made up
of closely set, usually variously coloured, small
pieces of material such as stone, mineral, glass,
tile, or shell.
TAPESTRY ART
- is one of the oldest forms of woven textile crafts,
traditionally created on a vertical loom. It's characterized
by a weaving technique in which all the warp threads
are hidden in the completed work, unlike the case with
cloth weaving where both the warp and the threads may
stay visible after the completion of the piece.
 7 ELEMENTS
OF ARTS
• Line
is an identifiable path created by a point moving in
space. However, when it comes to using the design
element of a line, there is nearly endless potential.
They often lead a viewer's eye around composition
and can communicate messages through their distinct • Shape
qualities. shapes play an important role in the creation of art.
Different characteristics of shapes evoke different
moods and meanings. They are also an important
element of design in space since they create
movement within a piece and lead the eye from one
design element to the next.
7 ELEMENT OF ARTS
• Form
form is sometimes used to describe a shape that
has an implied third dimension. In other words, an
artist may try to make parts of a flat image appear
three-dimensional.
• Space
Many artists are as concerned with space in their
works as they are with, say, color or form. There are
many ways for the artist to present ideas of space.
Remember that many cultures traditionally use
pictorial space as a window to view realistic subject
matter through, and through the subject matter they
present ideas, narratives and symbolic content.
7 ELEMENT OF ARTS
• Texture
At the most basic level, Three-dimensional works of
art (sculpture, pottery, textiles, metalwork, etc.) and
architecture have actual texture which is often
determined by the material that was used to create it:
wood, stone, bronze, clay, etc. Two-dimensional
works of art like paintings, drawings, and prints may
try to show implied texture through the use of lines, • Value
colors, or other ways.
the relative lightness or darkness of a shape in
relation to another. The value scale, bounded on one
end by pure white and on the other by black, and in
between a series of progressively darker shades of
grey, gives an artist the tools to make these
transformations.
7 ELEMENT OF ARTS
• Color
color is the most complex artistic element
because of the combinations and variations
inherent in its use. Humans respond to color
combinations differently, and artists study and
use color in part to give desired direction to
their work. Color is fundamental to many
forms of art. Its relevance, use and function in
a given work depend on the medium of that
work.
 END OF
CHAPTER 1