Overview The Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan, or the National Living Treasures Award, is conferred on Filipinos who are at the forefront of the practice, preservation, and promotion of the nation’s traditional folk arts. This module will introduce you about different National Living Treasures Awards CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT In almost all art forms-painting, sculpture, photography, music, literature theater, or dance-there is a subject that serves as the foundation of the creation of the work of art. The subject matter is the most obvious aspect of an artwork. It is what the work of art depicts or represents. It may be a person, an object, a scene, or an event. The subject provides the answer to the question: What is the work of art all about? The subject matter of art should not be the basis for judging works of art. It doesn't mean that representational arts are superior to non-representational arts. Some arts have a subject, others do not. Furthermore, works that depict pleasant subjects are not necessarily greater than works that depict unpleasant subjects. What matters most in art is not the subject matter, but how well the artist handles or presents that subject matter in his or her work SUBJECT -The subject matter is the literal, visible image in a work while content includes the connotative, symbolic, and suggestive aspects of the image. The subject matter is the subject of the artwork, e.g., still life, portrait, landscape, etc. CONTENT -The content is not subject or things in the work of art but it is the communication of ideas, feelings and reactions connected with the subject. When we look at an artwork its content is what is sensed rather than what can be analyzed. It is the ultimate reason for creating art. Types of Visual Art According to Subject There are two basic types of Visual Art according to the subject matter. Representational/Figurative Art • Representational artwork aims to represent actual objects or subjects from reality. • They are artworks which are based on images which can be found in the objective world, at least in the artist's imagination; i.e., images which can perhaps be named or recognized. • Subcategories under representational art include Realism, Impressionism idealism, and Stylization. All of these forms of representational arts represent actual subjects from reality. Painting, sculpture, graphic arts, literature, and theater arts are generally classified as representational, although some paintings and sculptures are without subjects Non-Representational/ Non-Objective Art • • • • Non-objective art is another way to refer to nonrepresentational art. Essentially Non-Representational/ Non-Objective Art the artwork does not represent or depict a person, place, or thing in the natural world. Usually, the content of the work is its color, shapes, brushstrokes, size, scale, and, in some cases, its process. Many people have difficulty in understanding the differences between abstract art and non-objective art. The clear difference lies in the subject matter chosen. If the artist begins with a subject from reality, the artwork is considered to be abstract. If the artist is creating with no reference to reality, then the work is considered to be non-objective. Architecture is mostly non-objective or non-representational. It does not depict or portray a subject. It is its own form. Music is also mostly non-objective or non-representational although some music depicts a subject Ways of Presenting the Subject Matter in the Visual Art History History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style. Historical paintings depict a moment in history rather than a subject such as a portrait. The events depicted in historical paintings are significant rather than scenes of everyday life. History paintings can include a range of subjects and topics. The paintings often illustrate a part of a story or a significant event. Spoliarium (often misspelled Spolarium) is a painting by Filipino painter Juan Luna Religion There are many ways of defining religious art. Religious art is: 1. any artwork that has a Christian or Biblical theme (Christian art); or 2. any artwork which illustrates the worship of any god, or deity; or 3. any artwork with an Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Juche Judaic, Bahai, Jainist theme, or any art depicting themes of the Shinto, Cao Chinese religions; or Dai or traditional 4. any artistic imagery using religious inspiration and motifs and is often intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual. Mythological Mythological art is a term used to describe art forms that draw on myth for their subject matter. The characters in myths are usually gods, supernatural heroes, and humans involved in extraordinary events or circumstances in a time that is unspecified but which is understood as existing apart from ordinary human experience. a. Landscape The landscape is a painting, drawing, or photograph which covers the depiction of outdoor or natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests. The composition of a landscape painting is usually a wide view. The sky is almost always included in the view, and the weather is often an element of the image. b. Cityscape A cityscape is a painting, drawing, or photograph with urban scenery or the urban environment as its primary focus. It is the urban equivalent of a landscape. Townscape is roughly synonymous with cityscape, though it implies the same difference in urban size and density (and even modernity) implicit in the difference between the wordscity and town. c. Seascape A seascape is a photograph, painting, or other work of art which depicts the sea as is primary subject. By a backward development, the word has also come to mean the view the sea itself and be applied in planning contexts to geographical locations possessing a good view of the sea d. Flora By definition, flora is a word of Latin origin referring to Flora, the goddess of flowers. Flora can refer to a group of plants, a disquisition of a group of plants, as well as to bacteria Flora is the root of the word floral, which means pertaining to flowers. A floral art is a painting, drawing, or photograph with flowers as its primary focus. e. Fauna Fauna can refer to the animal life or classification of animals of a certain region time period, or environment. Fauna is also of Latin origin. In Roman Mythology, Fauna was the sister of Faunus, a good spirit of the forest and plains. Animal style art is characterized by its emphasis on animal imagery as its primary subject matter. 5. Genre A genre is a painting photograph, or other artistic representation of subjects from everyday life, usually small in scale Developed particularly in Holland in the seventeenth century, most typically with scenes of peasant life or drinking in taverns. Genre painting is one of the five genres, or types of painting, established in the seventeenth century. 6. Portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography, a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer 7. Nude The nude figure is mainly a tradition in Western art and has been used to express ideals of male and female beauty and other human qualities. The nude is a work of fine art that has as its primary subject the unclothed human body. The nude evokes many contradictory things. Historically, the nude figure has been seen as representing innocence and purity as well as sensuality and sexuality. The artistic nude can be Apollonian, showing the harmonies of sacred geometry as embodied in the human form, or it can be Dionysian, expressing unconstrained energy or emotion. Power and weakness, pride and shame, pleasure and pain all of these are the experiences of being in the flesh, and all can be shown in the image of the flesh. 8. Still life A still life is one of the principal genres or subject types of Western art. Essentially, the subject matter of a still life painting or sculpture is anything that does not move or is dead. So, still life includes all kinds of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish, game, wine and so on. Still life can be a celebration of material pleasures such as food and wine, or often a warming of the ephemerality of these pleasures and e the brevity of human life. In modern art simple still life arrangements have often been used as a relatively neutral basis for the formal experiment, for example by Paul Cézanne and the Cubist painters 9. Surrealistic Surrealists feasted on the unconscious. They believed that Freud's theories on dreams, ego, superego and the id opened doors to the authentic self and a truer reality (the "surreal"). The word "surreal" is associated with strange juxtapositions or absurd combinations, like those experienced in dreams. Surrealistic art explores the marvelous and the irrational as a valid form of reality, in an effort to make art ambiguous and strange. By giving impressions to what is in the subconscious, surrealists compose dreamlike scenes that show an irrational arrangement of objects. The images are recognizable but are combined with fantastic and unnatural relationships Functions Function refers to the direct and practical usefulness of the arts. Architecture is directly and almost entirely functional because buildings and other structures are always built for some special purpose. Painting and sculpture may be used to narrate events, to portray people or events, to instruct, to commemorate individuals or historical events. These art works referred to as utilitarian arts since they are intended for practical use or utility. The functions of art normally fall into three categories. These are personal, social, or physical functions. These categories can and often overlap in any given piece of art. Physical Functions The physical functions of art are most easily dealt with. Works of art that are created to perform some service have physical functions. Architecture, any of the craftworks and industrial design are all types of art that have physical functions. Social functions when it addresses aspects of collective life, as opposed to one person's point of view or experience. The Personal functions of art are the most difficult to explain in any great detail. There are many of them, and they vary from person to person. An artist may create out of a need for self-expression, or gratification, She or he might have wanted to communicate a thought or point to the viewer. Perhaps the artist was trying to provide an aesthetic experience, both for self and viewers. A piece might have been meant to merely entertain others. Sometimes a piece isn't meant to have any meaning at all Art may serve the personal functions of control. MEDIUM AND TECHNIQUE MEDIUM Many of the words used in discussions of art are vague because they were drawn from a common language Form, style, color, and line are all in very general use and so have meanings other than the special ones we have given them in the vocabulary of art. This was not formerly true of the word media, but in recent years, it has come to be the case. Nowadays, everyone speaks of the media. What they refer to are the media of mass communication: radio, television, newspapers magazines, motion pictures, and so forth. Media is the plural form of medium. We have the medium of radio, the television medium and broadcasting media. In the fine arts, we are concerned with painting media, sculptural media, printing media, and within painting, sculpture, and printmaking the oil medium, the medium of cast bronze, and the medium of black print. The term medium refers to the materials which are used by an artist to create works of art to interpret his feelings or thoughts, Medium denotes the means by which an artist communicates his idea. Many materials have been used in creating different works of art thus, the medium is very essential in the arts. Without a medium, there is no art. Two-Dimensional Media Drawing Artists use many different materials, or media, to create art. In two-dimensional artworks, such as drawing and painting, artists use media such as crayons, paints, pastels. and pencils. Drawing is often the first step in making an artwork. The most popular drawing media are graphite pencils, colored pencils, crayons, colored markers, pens, pastels, and chalk. Materials in Dimensional Media) • • • • • • • Drawing (Two- Graphite pencils Colored pencils crayons colored markers Pens Pastels Chalk Painting Painting is the process of applying color to a surface such as canvas, paper, or wood, using tools such as a brush, a painting knife, a roller, or even your fingers. All paints are made up of pigments (colored powders), binder (a material that holds the grains of pigments together), and solvent (a liquid that controls the thickness of the paint). Alternative in brush • Painting knife • Roller • Fingers Printmaking Printmaking an artist repeatedly transfers an original image from one prepared surface to another. Four main printmaking techniques Relief Printing in art printmaking, a process consisting of cutting or etching a printing surface in such a way that all that remains of the original surface is the design to be printed. Intaglio printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. Lithography is a printing process that uses a flat stone or metal plate on which the image areas are worked using a greasy substance so that the ink will adhere to them by, while the non-image areas are made ink-repellent. Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. Three-Dimensional Media In three-dimensional artworks, artists use media, like clay and plastic, to make solid forms that have height width, and depth. The sculpture is a three-dimensional work of art, which sculptors can use clay, glass plastics, wood, stone, or metal. Crafts, works of art created by hand, are often three dimensional. These objects are functional as well as decorative. The different categories of functional crafts are weavings, quilts, baskets, pottery, handmade glass objects, and jewelry Architecture is another three-dimensional art form. It is the planning and creation of buildings Architects must study engineering, as well as the visual arts, to create buildings that are functional and pleasing to the eye. They must consider the environment in which a structure will be placed as well as the strengths of the media they will use. The sculpture is a three-dimensional work of art, which sculptors can use clay, glass plastics, wood, stone, or metal Crafts, works of art created by hand, are often three dimensional. These objects are functional as well as decorative. Architecture is another three-dimensional art form. It is the planning and creation of buildings. Technological Media Artists constantly seek out new media, leading to many new forms of art, such as photography, film, video, and computer art. Many artists use photography to express their artistic vision. Photography Photography is the technique of capturing optical images on light-sensitive surfaces Cinematographers Cinematographers, artists who use movie cameras, can use many different film media and production processes to create exciting, artistic films. Paint programs Paint programs is the process wherein images are made by filling in the tiny dots, called pixels, where the images are stored. Digital cameras and scanners Digital cameras and scanners the process wherein artists can create multimedia art, using computer software to combine text, graphics, video, and sound into a single artwork In the visual arts, organization is governed by different principles of the art design that guide the artist in making the art become more beautiful and interesting to the observer. Through the combination of lines, colors, and forms, an artist can give the observer new, varied, and satisfying experience. The design is the overall organizational visual structure of the formal elements in a work of art. The principles of art design are rules or guides to help one put these elements together to achieve beauty. These principles are: 1. Rhythm Rhythm can be described as timed movement through space; an easy, connected path along which the eye follows a regular arrangement of motifs. The presence of rhythm creates predictability and order in a composition. Visual rhythm may be best understood by relating it to the rhythm in sound. Rhythm depends largely upon the elements of pattern and movement to achieve its effects. The parallels between rhythm in sound music are very exact to the idea of rhythm in a visual composition. The difference is that the timed "beat" is sensed by the eyes rather than the ears. Linear rhythm refers to the characteristic flow of the individual line. Accomplished artists have a recognizable manner of putting down the lines of their drawings that is a direct result of the characteristic gesture used to make those lines, which, if observed, can be seen to have a rhythm of its own. Linear rhythm is not as dependent on the pattern but is more dependent on the time movement of the viewer's eye. Repetition involves the use of patterning to achieve timed movement and a visual "beat" This repetition may be a clear repetition of elements in a composition, or it may be a more subtle kind of repetition that can be observed in the underlying structure of the image. Alternation is a specific instance of patterning in which a sequence of repeating motifs is presented in turn (e.g. short/long: fat/thin; round/square; dark/light) to make the artwork more interesting and attractive. Gradation employs a series of motifs patterned to relate to one another through a regular progression of steps. This may be a gradation of shape or color. Some shape gradations may, in fact create a sequence of events, not unlike a series of images in a comic strip 2. Emphasis Emphasis is also referred to as a point of focus, or interruption. It marks the locations in a composition which most strongly draw the viewers' attention. Usually, there is a primary, or main, point of emphasis, with perhaps secondary emphases in other parts of the composition. The emphasis is usually an interruption in the fundamental pattern or movement of the viewers' eye through the composition, or a break in the rhythm. The artist or designer uses emphasis to call attention to something or to vary the composition in order to hold the viewers interest by providing visual "surprises." Emphasis can be achieved in a number of ways. Repetition creates emphasis by calling attention to the repeated element through sheer force of numbers. If a color is repeated across a map, the places where certain colors cluster will attract your attention, in this instance graphing varying rates of mortality from cardiovascular disease. Contrast achieves emphasis by setting the point of emphasis apart from the rest of its background. Various kinds of contrasts are possible. The contrast of color, texture, or shape will call attention to a specific point. The contrast of size or scale will as well. Placement in a strategic position will call attention to a particular element of a design The use of a neutral background isolates the point of emphasis. 3. Unity Unity is the underlying principle that summarizes all of the principles and elements of design. It refers to the coherence of the whole, the sense that all of the parts are working together to achieve a common result a harmony of all the parts. he B Michael Cono Batom (LOBO) by Colored glass Unity can be achieved through the effective and consistent use of any of the elements, 4. Balance Balance is the condition or quality which gives a feeling of rest repose, equilibrium, or stability. In art, we do not exactly arrange objects of equal physical weights or sizes to produce balance. It is the visual weights" of lines, forms, values, textures, and colors that we really balance. It may also be referred to as formal balance. When the elements are arranged equally on either side of a central axis, the result is Bilateral symmetry. This axis may be horizontal or vertical. It is also possible to build formal balance by arranging elements equally around a central point, resulting in radial symmetry Symmetrical balance called approximate symmetry in which equivalent but not identical forms are arranged around the fulcrum line. Asymmetrical balance, also called informal balance is more complex and difficult to visualize. It involves placement of objects in a way that will allow objects of varying Visual weight to balance one another around a fulcrum point. This can be best imagined by envisioning a literal balance scale that can represent the visual "weights" that can be imagined in a two-dimensional composition. Proportion Proportion is the principle which shows the pleasing relationship between a whole and its parts and between the parts themselves. It is the arrangement of space divisions in pleasing relationships. Visual Plan of Art There are other basic plans, organizations, or maps for the way visual arts are designed. This means, simply, that what we see on the canvas or paper has been pre planned, preorganized, to fit a certain visual pattern. Here are some of the basic visual plans artists frequently use: 1. The radial plan has its major lines radiating from a center point. Or you could say that all major lines "point to" a single place on the canvas. This single place or center point usually is not in the exact center of the canvas, but rather off to the side, top, or bottom. In fact, occasionally the center point may even be of the canvas such that we see only the lines converging or pointing toward it, but not the point itself. In the radial plan, we can find a strong sense of unity, wholeness, strength, a feeling of oneness and concentration because everything is focused on one central point or idea. The pyramidal plan has main elements that form a triangle (with the point at the top). Many buildings have pyramids as part of their plan Rectangular or columnar plan has a main object that forms an upright or vertical rectangle or column. Most architectural formsbuildings-use this plan in some way. Paintings or drawings of one human figure from head to toe, of a single tree, and of an entrance to a building are examples of two-dimensional versions of the rectangular or columnar plan. The parallel or bisected plan has two sides that are parallel to each other, almost as if the basic lines were drawn on one side in wet ink, and then the sides were folded over to impress the same ink lines on the right-side. The mixed plan has two or more of the above plans used to create its basic form. The parallel or bisected plan, for example, sometimes contains two sets of rectangular objects like each other And the pyramidal may also be parallel if both sides of the pyramid are similar. Other works of art may use different plans on different parts of the carivas, all in one work of art. The mixed plan offers several emotional feelings, sometimes in harmony with each other and sometimes competing on purpose The breakaway plan has elements that break away from, or disobey, the other plans. It has become popular especially in the most recent century. For example, a painting or drawing using a pyramidal plan may have, on one side, an arm or tree branch suddenly sticking out toward nowhere. Or a parallel plan painting or drawing may suddenly have, on one side, an object that is glaringly obvious in the way it is not balanced by something similar on the other side. The feelings we get from such breakaways are a surprise. confusion, and interruption.
