Introduction to
Humanities
Review
Of the Arts
PAINTING
• Painting is the art that has most to do
with revealing the visual appearance of
objects and events.
• The most basic elements of painting are
line, shape, light, texture, and color.
• The eye is the chief sense organ involved
in our participation with painting…
• Representational paintings furnishes the
world with definite objects and events.
• Abstract paintings offers us a complete
rest from practical concerns.
SCULPTURE
• Along with painting and architecture is
classified as one of the visual arts.
• It engages our senses differently than
painting does; because it occupies space as
a three-dimensional mass.
• Sunken-Relief Sculpture: carving cut
grooves of various depths into the surface
plane of the stone.
• Surface-Relief; Low-Relief; High-Relief;
etc.
ARCHITECTURE
•
•
•
1.
2.
3.
4.
Is the creative conservation of space.
Space is the material of the architect.
Four necessities of architecture:
Technical requirement – buildings must stand
(and withstand).
Functional requirements – they must stand in
such a way that they reveal their function or
use.
Spatial requirements – relationships with
surrounding buildings.
Content – subject matter = relevant values of
society.
LITERATURE
• Is an art whose medium is language used to
affect the imagination.
• Fiction writers and poets share many of
the techniques of literature because their
effects depend on universal language art.
• Language has denotation: a literal level
where words mean what they obviously say,
and connotation; a subtler level at which
words mean more than they obviously say.
DRAMA
• Is a species of literature whose basic
medium is spoken language.
• It can be read, somewhat like a poem
or a novel.
• The word “drama” comes from the
Greek word meaning “act.”
• Drama is spoken language acted, to
be produced for public exhibition,
usually upon a stage.
MUSIC
• Is one of the most powerful of the
arts partly because sounds – more
than any other sensory stimulus –
create in us involuntary reactions,
pleasant or unpleasant.
• There is no escaping the effects of
music except by turning off the
source.
• It can be experienced in two ways:
“hearing” or “listening.”
DANCE
1. Moving bodies shaping space.
2. At its most basic level, the subject
matter of dance is abstract motion.
3. In abstract dance the center of
interest is upon visual patterns.
4. It is rhythmic, unfolding in time, and
thus has common ground with music.
5. Most is accompanied by music.
FILM
• When we evaluate a film, all of these
elements come into play:
• Cinematography, the care with which the
film was photographed,
• Structure, the completeness and
excellence of the script or story line,
• Acting and character development,
• Editing of separate shots
• Music, the way sound evokes emotion or
establishes mood.
PHOTOGRAPHY
• When it became widely available in
the 1940’s and 1950’s the images
printed on paper were in black-andwhite or sepia (brown-and-white).
• The success of photography in
reproducing realistic scenes and
people had an instant impact on
painting.