LESSON 1

ART APPRECIATIONS

What is art to Me?

Understanding How Art Can Meet Some Human Needs

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the role of art as a tool to aid human limitations

• Relate art to yourself: to your context, experiences, and longings as a person.

• Challenge one’s critical thinking skills through creative ways of confronting life’s
problems.

What is Art appreciation?

Art appreciation is the study and understanding of the visual arts, including painting,
sculpture, architecture, and other forms of expression. It involves learning about the
elements and principles of art, as well as the historical and cultural context in which works
of art were created.

The word art etymologically comes from the Aryan root ar, which means to join or put
together

The Latin term ars, artis means everything that is artificially made or composed by man.

Arts can be classified into:

1. Motivated (functional)

Examples: Architecture, weaving, furniture-making.

2. Non-motivated (Non-functional)

Examples: Painting, sculpture, literature, music.

There are some proposed functions of art

★ Beauty

★ Happiness and hope

★ Identity and understanding one self

★ Grief and healing

★ Raising awareness

★ Culture and togertherness

Beauty

• One of the innate qualities that “pretty art” can give is that it makes our dull, lifeless walls
come to life. Let’s talk about prettiness and the aesthetic value of art. Though we have
different notions of beauty, still it is a common denominator when we are talking about
appreciating forms of art. Beauty makes sense to most of us.

Consideration of beauty is subjective- depends on the person looking at the thing. “Beauty
is in the eye of the beholder”

Happiness and Hope

-art gives a sense of joy and hope to its audience. Art mirrors the soul of those willing to
confront it. Artworks tend to echo the hopes and anxieties of an age.

• The bliss of looking at a piece of imagery evoking a happy memory.

• Paintings are placed in a daunting environment such as hospitals.

• Identifying oneself with the properties of an artwork.

• Experience and process of creating art itself.

Identity and Understanding the self

-Today’s generation, being the “me” generation, is also sometimes tagged as the “anxious
generation” Art is a powerful tool, help us communicate and relay confusion. Art as therapy
to aid in processing some sensitive experiences. Sometimes we see ourselves in an
artwork. Sometimes we see ourselves in the process.

Remembering and mark-making

-The monument of Rizal in Luneta Park is one example of a type of art that helps us
remember. Without the tangible characteristic of art, we will not be able to sustain our
nationalistic values well enough. We have pictures, films, and paintings that depict
heroism and nationalism.

Kapoor had this humongous, bean- shaped metallic sculpture placed at that certainly
builds a sense of mark and identity to that place where the traffic of pedestrians is usually
heavy.
The whole idea of Exposure is that this work, made at a particular time, rooted to ground,
reacts over time to the changing environment.

Gormley’s work has been considered as the largest sculpture in the world and one of the
most popular.

Examples of Remembering and Mark -marking

Monument of Jose Rizal in Luneta Park

“Cloud Gate” Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor’s

Exposure Antony Gormley

Grief and Healing

-Many of the most poignant and humanistic products of art were made after the Word War
II. Twentieth-century art mostly expressed human suffering and darkness in its themes.
Rachel Whiteread talked about this haunting remembrance of holocaust victims in her
work “Ghost Library.”

Some may use art as a tool to express pain and process it in therapy. Nonetheless, it plays
an important role in making grieving somehow dignified.

Raising Awareness

-Have you seen large sculptural effigies (those Paper Mache made to be burned protest art)
during Rallies in Manila? Some art can be categorized as activist art.

Many socially-concerned artists have emerged in the age of modernism portraying

Culture and Togetherness

-Lastly, forms of art are often localized so that they bring identity also to certain regions.
This is very evident here in the Philippines, which is geographically separated by thousands
of islands-we are very regionalized. Forms of art are often localized so that they bring
identity also to certain regions.

National Custom of Catriona Grey wore the “Whole Philippines” symbolically uniting us
through her Luzon-Visayas-Mindanao inspired national custom.
LESSON 2 :The Elements and Principles of Art

The Ingredients for a great Composition

The 7 Elements of Art

Line

Shape

Form

Space

Texture

Value

Color

Elements of art

Are the formal or tangible aspects of art. These are termed as elements “medium of
language” of visual arts.

An artist can choose which elements to use to get his/her idea, belief, feeling and
experience across.

Learning Outcomes

• Learn how art communicates colors, symbolic, quality of shape, line, movement, quality
of texture, the drama of lighting, and many others.

• Be able to read design principles behind some effective and thought-provoking art forms
and graphic designs.

• Explore materials and techniques through firsthand experience

What are the elements of art?

The Elements of Art are the “tools” that artists use to make art. There are 8 of them:
Line

Value

Texture

Shape

Form

Space

Color

Light

Line

A line is a path that a point takes through space. Lines can be thick, thin, dotted or solid.
They can make straight movements, zig-zags, waves or curls.

Horizontal Lines are generally restful, like the horizon, where the sky meets land

Vertical lines seem to be reaching, so they may seem inspirational like tall majestic trees
or church steeples

Diagonal lines tend to be disturbing. They suggest decay or chaos like lightening or falling
treesLines can convey emotion as well. They may show excitement, anger, calmness,
tension, happiness and many other feelings. Because of this, some are said to be
expressive.

Lines can be expressive and have a quality of its own like: scribbles, whimsical or naïve
lines, implied lines, blurred lines, (lines that are smudged, shaded or erased), aggressive
lines, and calligraphic lines.

Shape

is created when a line becomes connected and encloses space. It is the outline or outward
appearance of something. Shapes are 2 Dimensional (2-D) which means there are 2 ways
they can be measured.

You can measure its HEIGHT and its WIDTH.

The 3 Basic Kinds od Shape

Geometric shapes

Have smooth even edges and are measurable. The include the square, the circle, the
triangle and the rectangle.

Organic/Biomorphic shapes

Have more complicated edges and are usually found in nature. Leaves, flowers, amoeba,
etc.

Amorphous Shape

Lacking definite form; having no specific shape; formless: the amorphous clouds.

Form

A Form is a shape that has become 3- Dimensional (3-D) Form has HEIGHT, WIDTH and
DEPTH—which is the 3rd dimension.Depth shows the thickness of the object. Forms are
NOT flat like shapes are!

Turning Shapes into Forms

A triangle becomes a cone or a pyramid

A square becomes a cube

Turning Shapes into Forms

A rectangle can become a box or a cylinder

In order to turn a circle into a sphere, you must shade it. You can’t add another side to it!

Value

Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. Value makes objects appear more real
because it imitates natural light. When showing value in a work of art, you will need a LIGHT
SOURCE.

A light source Is the place where the light is coming from, the darkest areas are always on
the opposite side of the light.

Lighter tones- Are used to indicate the light source, or where the light reflects off of, and/or
shines on a object.
Darker tones- Are used to indicate the lack of light.