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TOPIC 4 Knowing The Function of Arts

1. Art serves many functions including personal expression, social influence, and physical utility. It can communicate ideas, influence behavior, and serve practical purposes like tools or containers. 2. Socially, art is used for propaganda, moral instruction, celebrations, and recording history. It can influence buying decisions through advertising and shape societies through literature, religion, and protest. 3. Art with physical functions includes tools, containers, architecture, and crafts that serve practical uses while also being aesthetically pleasing. Examples are chairs that can be sat on and buildings that provide shelter.

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83 views

TOPIC 4 Knowing The Function of Arts

1. Art serves many functions including personal expression, social influence, and physical utility. It can communicate ideas, influence behavior, and serve practical purposes like tools or containers. 2. Socially, art is used for propaganda, moral instruction, celebrations, and recording history. It can influence buying decisions through advertising and shape societies through literature, religion, and protest. 3. Art with physical functions includes tools, containers, architecture, and crafts that serve practical uses while also being aesthetically pleasing. Examples are chairs that can be sat on and buildings that provide shelter.

Uploaded by

Angel Camat
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Topic 4: Knowing the Functions of Arts

Learning Outcomes
At the end of the session, you will be able to:
a. Discuss the different functions of art;
b. Demonstrate understanding how artists use images to represent ad
idea; and
c. Realize the function of some art forms in daily life.

Presentation of Content

MORE THAN YOU SEE: THE MANY FUNCTIONS OF ART


By Frederick A. Horowitz

Art has many different functions in human history. Each society defined its
own purposes for art, and produced an art suited to those purposes. For ancient
Romans, art served as a vehicle of propaganda: their sculptures proclaimed
victories, and their buildings highly praised the power of the State. In modern
societies like our own, art serves different and sometimes contradictory purposes.
One artist paints in order to communicate a message to his audience, while
across the street another paints in order to please himself. A third artist explores
shapes and colors; a fourth illustrates books.

Art functions as:

1. An agent of magic (to ensure a successful hunt, perpetuate the soul after death,
triumph over an enemy, cure diseases, etc.)
2. An aid to meditation
3. An agent to ritual
4. A record of events, objects, situations
5. A substitute for real thing, or a symbol
6. A souvenir
7. Propaganda to impress, persuade or change thinking or behavior
8. Communication of stories, ideas, events
9. An agent of social control
10. Amusement or entertainment
11. A mean of moral improvement
12. education
13. A means of self-expression
14. Self-revelation
15. Release of emotions
16. Exploration of vision
17. A reflection and interpretation of life
18. An expression of beauty
19. Decoration or embellishment
20. Monetary investment
21. A status symbol

The functions of arts are wide ranging. Art is as broad as human experience. All of art comes
out of life and is bound up with life. Art is meaningful, but meaningful in ways that differ from
society to society, from time to time, and from person to person.
Adapted from More Than You See: A Guide to Art
New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 198

With the numerous listed functions of arts, they may normally fall into three categories as
mentioned by Esaak (2019). These are personal, social, and physical functions.

1. Personal Function

There are many types of personal function, and they are subjective and will, therefore,
vary from person to person.

An artist may create out of a need for self-expression, or gratification. S/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.

Further, art may serve the personal functions of control. Art has been used to attempt to
exert magical control over time, or the seasons or even the acquisition of food. Art is used to
bring order to a messy and disorderly world. Conversely, art can be used to create chaos when an
artist feels life is too staid and ordinary. Art can also be therapeutic - for both the artist and the
viewer.

2. Social Function
According to Ortiz et al. (1976), art performs a social function when:

a. It seeks or tends to influence the collective behavior of a people.


b. It is created to be seen or used primarily in public situations.
c. It expresses or describes social or collective aspects of existence as opposed to
individual and personal kinds of experiences.
Influencing Social Behavior

• Pictorial form is very powerful means of putting across a message.


• Paintings, photographs, posters, cartoons have been used to express humanitarian
concern as well as ideological or political comment.
• Satire- which puts up people and institutions to ridicule so that they will change- is
effectively communicated in various cartoons and caricatures.
• Editorial cartoons convey the message more directly and clearly than the printed
word does. Cartoonists comment on the foibles(weaknesses) of society and of its
leaders, with the hope that something is done to correct these faults and improve the
human condition.
• Literature has served just as well for political and ideological expression. It is a
powerful tool in shaping society and its manners. Urbana at Felisa by Modesto de
Castro- an epistolary novel of the 19th century, became the Filipino code of ethics of
the time, guiding the youth on how to conduct themselves in church, in social
gatherings, in school, and at home.
• Propaganda Literature has swayed people’s minds and feelings toward certain ends.
• Religion has especially capitalized on the arts to spread beliefs and reinforce and
sustain faith. It plays noble functions as enlightening us in our spiritual beliefs and
elevating our moral character.
• Advertising art aims to affect the buying behavior of people. These include posters,
billboards, magazine and newspapers adds, catalogs, handbills, package design, radio,
television.

Display and Celebration

• Commemoration of important personages in society serves to record important


historical events, or reveals the ideals of heroism and leadership that the community
would want the young to emulate.
• Rituals have played an important role in people’s lives and have influenced the
growth of certain arts as well.
• Public celebrations, such as festivals and other activities, unite people in a shared
experience, just as the celebration of important phase of life do.

Social Description

• Art works are vital historical documents.


• Tools, weapons furniture, paintings, statues, stories and songs and buildings reflect
the feelings, struggles and achievements of people. They reveal how people thought,
felt, and lived in a certain historical period.
• Temples, sculptures, epics, plays and even the pottery of ancient Greece tell us so
much about the age when man first regarded himself as the measure of all things.
• Portraits are informative.

3. Physical Function

The physical functions of art are often the easiest to understand. Works of art that are
created to perform some service have physical functions.

Tools and containers are objects which function to make our lives physically comfortable.
Functional works of art may be classified as either tools or containers.

Take a look at the given terms below. Reflect why these are categorized this way.
1. A spoon- tool
2. A car- tool
3. A building- container
4. A Community- container
5. A ceramic vase- container
6. A chair-container

Note that architecture, any of the crafts, and industrial design are all types of art that have physical
functions.

An example of the physical function of art

Art that has a physical function usually relates to items that


can be used for a practical purpose because of their physical
structure, despite their artistic appeal. Examples include
architecture, which can be breathtaking, but still primarily
serves a physical function. This chair is a good example of
physical art. Its design means that it is immediately
aesthetically interesting to the eye, but its main function is
to be a comfortable chair to sit on.

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