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ART APPRECIATION
INTRODUCTION – WHAT IS ART
THE NATURE OF ART
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Art as a creation
o Ars (latin) “skill”
o Techne (Greek), “technology”
▪ Proficiency; perfection →
ORDER
▪ “skills and products primarily
intended to delight the senses
and produce a satisfying
experience of the beautiful”
(Ortiz, et al., p. 9)
Aesthetics
o From the Greek aisthanomai
(“perception”), the term was coined by
philosopher Alexander Baumgarten in
the early 18th century
o The field of knowledge gained by
sensory experience combined with
feelings
o Branch of philosophy concerned with
notions of the beautiful in works of art
o Set of principles/characteristics of what
is considered beautiful in a particular
time and place (mark getlein, living with
art, p. 30)
The Nature of Art
o Art as expression and communication
o The scream, Edvard Munch
o Genius
o Milieu
o Value judgments = SUBJECTIVE
o Art can be many different things, and
“beautiful” (what is pleasing to the eye)
is just one of them.
o Art touches the intellect and the
emotions ultimately brings far greater
satisfaction. (rita gilbert, living with art
p. 25).
ANALYZING ART
Tendencies you should avoid:
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“Na-search lang”
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You go into the meaning of the work
without engaging with the work of art
first
“Dinescribe naman po”
o The description has to be seen in
specificity: how exactly do you see your
claims/insights in the work you are
describing?
What you should do instead:
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Engage with the work of art first, on your own
o Establish the “literal meaning” of the
work by looking carefully at the details.
Start always with your answer to, “what
do you see?” (meaning “what are the
objects/figures you see literally
depicted in the work)
Try to understand the significance of the work
on your own
o Ask yourself, what do you know about
these objects you identified? What do
you know about the artist? The milieu?
The movement and style of the work?
Look up articles and other legitimate sources to
verify your ideas and /or educate yourself
further
o I cannot stress enough the importance
of using authoritative, legitimate, and
peer-reviewed sources if you are delving
into a piece of information for the first
time.
THE NATURE OF ART
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Art as creation
Planned Activity
Man-made
People expect art to be beautiful
People also expect art to mimic the real world
o Preconception: Adeptness at realism
(replication of reality) = Authentication
of artistry (proficiency)
Art is not nature.
o “nature and art being two different
things, cannot be the same thing.
Through art we express our conception
of what nature is not” – Pablo Picasso
o Cubism
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Forms are fragmented into
planes (geometric facets),
which are arraned to form a
pictorial but not naturalistic
reality
Forms may be viewed
simultaneously from different
vantage points
Figure and background have
equal importance (rita living wit
art p. 533)
Some Terms
o Representational Art
▪ Naturalistic image
• Illusionistic
• Hyperrealism
▪ Extreme illusionism
• Trompe l’oeil
• Don eddy Volkswagen
(1971)
• Audrey Flack, Shiva Blue
(1973)
• Richard Estes, The plaza
(1991)
o Abstract Art
▪ Has reference to the natural
world but does not duplicate it
exactly
▪ Give minimum visual
information/cues to beholder to
identify the form
▪ Extracts the essence of the
subject
• Stylized: exaggerated
certain features
associated to a form
o Non-representational art
▪ Has no reference to the natural
world; no discernible subject to
represent
▪ Bypasses forms and touches our
emotions directly
▪ Jackson Pollock Convergence
(1952)
▪ Jackson Pollock
• On the floor I am more
at ease. I feel nearer,
more part of the
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painting, since this way
I can walk around it,
work from the four
sides and literally be in
the painting. When I am
not aware of what I am
doing. It is only after a
sort of ‘get acquainted’
period that I see what I
have been about. I have
no fears in making
changes, destroying the
image, etc., because the
painting has a life of its
own. I try to let it come
through. It is only when
lose contact with the
painting that the result
is a mess. Otherwise
there is pure harmony,
an easy give and take,
and the painting comes
out well.”
o Abstract Expressionism
▪ Art that sought for a direct
expression of their emotions
▪ Often nonrepresentational
o German Expressionism
▪ Art that looked inward, to the
soul and psyche
▪ Sought to explore the artists’
own emotions, passions, and
terrors
SOME TERMS
o Form
▪ The physical appearance of the
work of art – its materials, style
and composition
▪ Composition: the organization
of elements in a work of art
o Content
▪ The message conveyed by a
work of art
▪ Subject matter: what the work
of art is about
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Style
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Sum the constant recurring, or
coherent traits identified with a
certain individual or group:
▪ Whole artistic culture
▪ Geographic location
▪ Group of artists
▪ One artist
• Throughout his career
• At one point in his life
Iconography
▪ People, places, events, and
other objects/images in a work,
as well as the symbolism and
conventions attached to those
images by a particular religion
or culture
▪ Fra Filippo Lippi, Nativity (1467
– 69).
▪ Albrecht Durer, Adam and Eve
(1504)
• Four of the animals
represent the medieval
idea of the four
temperaments
(humors):
• Cat = choleric
• Rabbit = sanguine
• Ox = Phlegmatic
• Elk = melancholic
• Before the fall, these
humors were held in
check, controlled by the
innocence of man; once
Adam and Eve ate from
the apple of knowledge,
all four were activated,
all innocence lost.
▪ BURIN – tool for engraving
▪ Audrey Flack, Marilyn (Vanitas)
1977.
▪ Salvador Dali, The persistence
of Memory (1931).
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ART APPRECIATION
ELEMENTS OF FINE ARTS / VISUAL ARTS
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Lines
o Visual path
o Boundaries of shapes and figures
Serenity and Stability
Strength and Sturdiness
Unrest Movement, Uncertainty, Instability
Action
Gradual change of direction
o Fluidity Grace
Abrupt Change of direction:
o Tension
o Confusion
o Chaos
o Conflict
Shapes
o Organic
o Geometric
o Pier Mondrian, Broadway Boogie
Woogie
Space
o Manipulation of space
▪ Figure-ground relationship
• Positive – space created
by an image or
sculpture
• Negative – space
around and between
the parts of an image or
sculpture
▪ Use of Tesselation
• M.C. Escher, Regular
Division of the Plane
with Horsemen
▪ Spatial Organization
• Edgar Degas, Dancers
Practicing at the Bar
(1877)
▪ Overlapping Plabes
• Marie Laurencin, Group
of Artists
▪ Perspective
• Vanishing point
• Linear perspective
• Egyptian art – no
perspective
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Pierro della Francesca,
View of an Ideal City
(1460)
▪ Variation in size
• Raphael, St. George
Killing the Dragon
▪ Positions on the Picture Pkane
• Hokusai, Boy Viewing
Mt. Fuji
Summary: Manipulation on Space
▪ Foreground
• Large size
• Low in the picture
• Parallel lines far apart
• Overlapping other
forms
• Sharply defined forms
• Intense colors
• Rough textures
▪ Background
• Small size
• Set high in the picture
• Parallel lines converging
• Overlapped by other
forms
• Blurred forms
• Grayed colors
• Smooth textures
Colors
o Pigmentation
▪ The property that enable things
to absorb and reflect only one
color from the spectrum
o Complementary Analogous
▪ Primary
▪ Triad
▪ Secondary triad
▪ Intermediate
▪ Cool and warm
▪ Water lily pond by Claude
Monet
▪ Sunrise by Claude Monet
o Orange
▪ Flesh, Warmth, life, informality,
approachability
▪ Flaming June, Lord Frederic
Leighton
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Blue
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Coolness Reserved Elegance,
Distance, Sadness
Red
▪ Passion, Erotic, Anger, Danger
The three components of color
▪ Hue
• Hue is another term for
the names of color – in
other words, it is how
we call the actual color
of a pigment or object.
Strictly, there are only
seven (7) hues: those of
the rainbow: ROYGBIV.
▪ Intensity (aka Chroma or
Saturation)
• This is the brightness or
dullness of a hue
created by mixing a
color with its
complement (e.g. red
with green). The
chroma or saturation of
a color is a measure of
how vibrant or intense
it is. Think of it as “pure,
bright color,” compared
to a color diluted with
white, or darkened by
black or grey.
• Degree of lightness and
darkness in a color
▪ Value (aka Tone)
• Value or tone is the
quality and depth of a
color, particularly the
gradations from light to
dark. A color may be
“toned down” to make
it less vivid or “toned
up” to make it more
solid or brighter.
• It is a measure of how
light or dark a color is,
without any
consideration for its
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hue. Value may further
be classified as the
shade of a color,
composed by adding
more black pigment, or
a tint, composed by
adding more white
pigment.
• Relationship between
blacks, whites, and
grays
▪ The difference between
Intensity and Value:
• With intensity you’re
considering how pure
or intense the hue is;
with value, you’re not
considering what the
hue is at all – jjust how
light or dark it is.
• Intensity is either bright
or dull; value is either
light or dark
• You create intensity by
adding more or less of
its complementary hue;
you create value by
adding black or white to
a pigment.
Relationship of Colors
▪ Neutrals
• Black, white, and gray
▪ Tenebrism – heightened
chiaroscuro (interplay of light
and shadow)
• Remembrandt, Christ in
the storm on the sea of
galilee
• Caravaggio, the
conversion on the road
to Damascus
Texture
o Clarifies space
o Creates spatial depth and volume
o Impasto
o Vincent van gogh – starry night
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Georges seutrat, A Sunday afternoon on
the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886).
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ART APPRECIATION
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PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN IN THE VISUAL ARTS
UNITY AND VARIETY
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Unity
o A principle of sameness in a design
o Sense of oneness, of coherence
Variety
o Principle of difference in a design
o Provides interest
Goal: Harmony
Ben Jones, Black face and Arm unit (1971)
Sonia Delaunay, Electric Prisms (1914)
Andy Warhol, 100 Campbell Soup Cans (1962)
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EMPHASIS AND SUBORDINATION
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BALANCE
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Distribution of visual weight in a composition
(what looks visually light or visually heavy)
heavy
Large form
Dark-value form
Textured form
Complex form
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light
Small form
Light value form
Smooth form
Simple form of the
same size
Symmetrical Balance
o “forms of a composition mirror each
other across a central axis, an imaginary
horizontal or vertical line that divides
composition in half” (Getlin, 122)
o One half of the composition mirrors
other half exactly
o “we do not perceive absolutes, but
relationships” (Getlin, 124)
o Frida Kahlo, The two Fridas (1939)
o Paul Gauguin, Day of the God (1894)
Asymmetrical Balance
o When the 2 halves if the composition
do not match
o One half of the composition does not
mirror the other half exactly
o “we do not perceive absolutes, but
relationships”
o William H. Johnson, Going to Church
(1940-41)
Some principles of visual balance
o 2 or more small forms can balance
larger one
o A smaller dark form can balance a larger
one
Radial Balance
o Balance created when elements
proceed from a central fixed point
(“radially”, as if in a circle)
o Baptism of Christ and Procession of
Twelve Apostles, C. 520
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Emphasis
o Principle of design used by artists to
draw the viewer’s attention to a specific
part of a composition
▪ Focal point: when the emphasis
is on a relatively small, clearly
defined area
o Francisco de Goya, Executions of the
Third of May (1808)
o Grant Wood, Parson Weems’ Fable
(1939)
Subordination
o Certain areas of the composition are
deliberately made less visually
interesting
PROPORTION AND SCALE
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Scale
o Size in relation to a constant size
Proportion
o Size relationships
▪ Parts of a whole
▪ Two or more items as a unit
Robert Jacob Gordon, Giraffa camelopardalis
(Giraffe), 1779
Leonardo da Vinci, Study of Human Proportions
According to Vitruvius, 1485-90
Proportions of the golden section and golden
rectangle
o Square
o Golden section. 1:1.618
o Golden rectangle
o Sequence of golden rectangles
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Rene margritte. La folie des grandeurs II, 1962
o Madness, sizes, megalomania
o Clair 1979
▪ Delusions of Grandeur is richer
and more complex
▪ Understood as the common
expression designating an
exaggerated taste for luxury
▪ Can also be taken as designating
sizes which have become
somehow excessive, mad.
▪ Can also be understood as the
affirmation of unreasonable
nature of wanting to measure
and attribute dimension to
things.
▪ Various elements of the
painting disturb our usual
spatial perception, thereby
emphasizing that uneasiness
and leading to a third
interpretation: it is
unreasonable attribute measure
to things
▪ One of the most striking
element – the sky: in the form
of cubes piled on top of the
other.
▪ Magritte reversed the order of
things – applying it to the sky.
▪ We see a retaliation from
Magritte on l’istoria, diverting
bodies from their functions,
displacing their locations and
delivering their sizes into
madness.
▪ It precisely pull strings which
command the illusionistic space
of classical perspective that
Magritte disturbs the order of
the physical world; thus he
disturbs the congruence
claimed by Alberti between
mathematical order of
representation and the
properties of things
represented acc. to their
proportions, weight, role, and
place.
RHYTM
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Repetition of accented elements
Piet Mondrian, Composition in Blue B. 1917
Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930
Wang Yani, One Hundred Monkeys, 1984 – 85
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