Welcome to Humanities

Introduction
 Organization
• Unfamiliarity causes individuals to feel uncomfortable approaching
the arts and literature
oDue to individuals who say its only for the knowledgeable and
sophisticated
• Aesthetic – relating to the appreciation of beauty or good taste or
having a heightened sensitivity to beauty: a philosophy of what is
artistically valid or beautiful
oCutting ourselves off with aesthetic communication & knowledge
forces us to cope with life using only half of our survival tools
• Arts play important roles in making the world around us more
interesting and habitable
oArtistic ideas join with conventions to make everyday objects
attractive and pleasurable
• Conventions – set of rules or mutually accepted conditions that play
important roles in everyday life
oFigure 0.1 on page 16 in text – scale drawing of an 18th-century
highboy that shows how art and convention combine in everyday
items
 Maker conceived the highboy to fulfill a practical purpose – to
provide for storage of household objects in an easily accessible,
yet hidden, place
 Cabinetmakers felt the additional need to provide an interesting
& attractive object
Highboy
1953 Volkswagen Beetle
• Figure 0.2 on page 17 show how art and convention combine
oUsed strong repetition of the oval compared to later models
oAs safety standards called for larger bumpers, the oval design of
the motor compartment hood flattened; rear window enlarged and
squared to accommodate need for increased rear vision
 Intrusion of these conventions changed the design of the Beetle
by breaking down the strong unity of the original composition
• Studying the arts is like learning to drive a car
oAt first, one is preoccupied with the mechanics and concentrating
on keeping the car moving in a straight line
oAs technical details become habit, drivers can attend to more
important details of driving
• When the art study experience is new and attempts are made at doing
it “right”, often the details interfere with the larger experience
oObsession with finding specific details robs the occasion of its
pleasure and meaning but with practice the details fall into place
and enjoyment of the experience expands
oGetting to the point requires a beginning; perceiving anything
requires an understanding of what can be perceived
• Organization of text -Part I: The Media of the Arts
oBasic terminology
oIntroduction of the traditional art disciplines: drawing, painting,
printmaking, photography, sculpture, architecture, music, literature,
theatre, cinema, and dance
oEach discipline has its own language
oEach Part I chapter has 2 parts:
1. “Formal and Technical Qualities”
a. Formal qualities – mainly to do with larger divisions such as
types and genres of the discipline
b. Technical qualities – devices from which the artist constructs
the work of art: composition, melodies, and plots
c. Represents our going to the work of art
2. “Sense Stimuli”
a. Discuss how the earlier characteristics & qualities cause
works of art to affect our sense responses
b. Represents the artwork coming to us
• Organization of text – Part II: The Styles of the Arts
oFundamentals of artistic style throughout history in a variety of
cultures: Asian, African, European, and American
oUse chronology & continents as organizing principles but they do
not give us a true “history” of the arts
oConfront cultures different from our own
oEvery work of art comprises unique qualities and potential
experiences for us
oMore we know about those factors, the richer our experience
becomes
 Pronouncing Names and Terms
• In the text, each term or name not pronounced exactly as it appears is
followed, in parentheses, by a pronunciation guide
• See page 18 for a guide to the system of pronunciation used in this text
• Principle stress in a word or name is indicated by capitalization
oExample, “fable” would be indicated as FAY-buhl
• Pronunciation is not always universally agreed upon
o Sounds such as French nasals and German umlauts mean little to
those unfamiliar with the languages
 The Arts and Ways of Knowing
• When we use the term “humanities,” we automatically include the arts
• When we use “arts,” we restrict our focus
• Arts disciplines
o Visual art: drawing, painting, printmaking, photography
o Performing art: music, theatre, dance, cinema
o Literature
o Architecture (including landscape architecture)
• Arts disciplines arrange sound, color, form, movement, and/or other
elements in a manner that affects our sense of beauty in a graphic or
plastic (capable of being shaped) medium
• Humanities include arts but also include other disciplines such as
philosophy and sometimes, history which comprise branches of
knowledge that share a concern with humans and their cultures
• Humanities can be defined as those aspects of culture that look into
what it means to be human
• Sciences seek to describe reality while humanities seek:
o to express humankind’s subjective experiences of reality,
o to interpret reality,
o to transform our interior experience into tangible forms, and
o to comment upon reality, to judge and evaluate
• Change in the arts differs from change in the sciences in 1
way: new scientific discovery & technology usually
displaces the old, but new art does not invalidate earlier
human expression
oArt of Picasso cannot make the art of Rembrandt invalid
Picasso Rembrandt
 What Are Art’s Main Concerns?
• Creativity
• Aesthetic communication
• Symbols
• Fine arts and crafts
 Creativity
• Act of bringing forth new forces and forms: we take chaos,
formlessness, vagueness and unknown and crystallize them into form,
design, inventions, and ideas
• It underlies our existence
• Allows scientists on the path to a cure for cancer or invent a computer
• Artists find new ways to express ideas through processes in which
creative action, thought, material, and technique combine in a medium
to create something new
 Aesthetic Communication
• Artists need people with whom they share their perceptions
• Optimum conditions result in an exciting and meaningful experience
• Throughout history, artistic communication has involved aesthetics – study
of the nature of beauty and of art and comprises one of the 5 Classical fields
of philosophical inquiry:
1. Aesthetics
2. Epistemology: nature & origin of knowledge
3. Ethics: general nature of morals and of specific moral choices to
be made by the individual in relationship with others
4. Logic: principles of reasoning
5. Metaphysics: nature of first principles and problems of ultimate
reality
 Symbols
• Symbols are usually a tangible emblem of something abstract:
mundane object evoking a higher realm
• Differ from signs which suggest a fact or condition
• Symbols carry deeper, wider, and richer meanings
• Occur in literature, art, and ritual
• Can be based on conventional relationships – example: rose standing
for courtly love in medieval romance
• Can suggest physical or other similarities between itself and its
reference – example: red rose representing blood
• Can suggest personal associations – example: Irish poet William
Butler Yeats’s (1865-1939) use of rose to symbolize death, ideal
perfection, and Ireland
• Occur in linguistics where words are considered arbitrary symbols
• Occur in psychoanalysis where symbols, particularly images in
dreams, are regarded as repressed, subconscious desires and fears
• In Christian art, lamb symbolizes the sacrifice of Christ
• In Aboriginal art, the “Dreaming” symbolizes the presence or mark of
an ancestral being in the world
oErna Motna’s Bushfire and Corroboree Dreaming – entire painting
is a symbolizing series of abstract marks designed to show the
ancestor’s past & present existence in the Australian landscape
Bushfire and Corroboree Dreaming
by Erna Motna (1988)
 Fine and Applied Art
• Fine Arts – meaning painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theatre,
dance, and cinema for aesthetic qualities
• Applied Arts – sometimes included architecture and the “decorative
arts” and refers to art forms that have a decorative rather than
expressive or emotional purpose
oHandcrafts by skilled artisans: ornamental work in metal, stone,
wood and glass as well as textiles, pottery, and bookbinding
oMay also encompass interior design and personal objects such as
jewelry, weaponry, tools, and costumes
oEven mechanical appliances can be considered part of applied arts
since they can have artistic flair and provide pleasure/interest
 Example – Braun AG, Juice Extractor 1950-58 – 0.5 image on
page 23 has 2-part body on colored rubber feet and looks like a
robot where its plumpness gives a sense that we could imagine
talking to this device as a friendly companion rather than
regarding it as a machine
 Many decorative arts, such as weaving, basketry, & pottery are
considered “crafts,” but the definitions of the terms remain
arbitrary and without sharp distinction
 What Are Art’s Purposes & Functions?
Purposes
• Art can:
1. provide a record
2. give visible or other form to feelings
3. reveal metaphysical or spiritual truths
4. help people to see the world in new ways
• Art can do any or all of the above
• Until invention of camera, one of art’s principal purposes – enact a
record of the world
o Cave art of earliest times, Egyptian art, ancient Greek art, Roman
art, etc. until camera’s invention
• Art gives form to feelings
oExample in the Expressionist style of early 20th century where the
artist’s emotions toward the work’s content form a primary role in
the work
o“Feelings” referenced in works of art through:
 Technique – example: brushstroke
 Color – example isolate 2 visual examples
• Revelation of metaphysical or spiritual truths rises as
example in plainchant and Gothic cathedrals of medieval
Europe where light & space embodied medieval spirituality
oTribal totem (Bakota reliquary figure) deals in spiritual &
metaphysical revelation
• Art that has abstract content may reveal a new way of
understanding as seen in unique process of painting by the
mid-20th century American artist Jackson Pollock
Bakota reliquary figure Jackson Pollock process
bone guardians of painting
 Functions
• 3 functions (how it does what it does):
1. Enjoyment
2. Political and social commentary
3. Artifact
oNot the only ones but serve as indicators of how art functioned in
past and can function in present
• No one function has more importance than the others nor are they
exclusive; one artwork may fill many functions
• Plays, paintings, & concerts – escape from everyday cares, treat us to a
pleasant time, & engage us in social occasions
oMay also create insights into human experience; glimpse conditions
of other cultures, & find healing therapy in enjoyment
• Artwork where one individual finds enjoyment may function
as profound social & personal comment to another
oExample: symphony may relax us & allow us to escape our cares
but it may comment on the life of the composer and/or the
conditions of life in general
oExample: Chinese artist, Wu Chen’s The Central Mountain, may
raise a plain mountain view to a profound level of beauty but the
result depends on artist, the artwork, and us – See next slide
• Many believe art need not have any “function” – “Art for
art’s sake”
The Central Mountain
by Wu Chen (China)
• Art used to bring political change or modify behavior of large groups
has political or social functions]
oExample: ancient Rome – authorities used music & theatre to keep
masses of unemployed people occupied in order to control urban
unrest
oExample: Roman playwrights used public platform to attack
incompetent or corrupt officials
 Greek playwright Aristophanes – in play, The Birds, comedy
used as means of challenging the political ideas of leaders – in
play, Lysistrata, puts his message over in story which all women
of Athens go on a sex strike until Athens rids itself of war and
warmongers
 oExample: 19th-century Norway – playwright Henrik Ibsen used An
Enemy of the People as platform for airing the conflict of priorities
between pollution control & economic wellbeing
oExample: Today in U.S. – artworks used as vehicles to advance
social & political causes or to sensitize viewers, listeners, or
readers to certain cultural situations such as racial prejudice or
HIV/AIDS
• Art functions as artifact: product of a particular time & place,
an artwork represents ideas & technology of that specific
environment
oExample: From Igbo-Ukwu, eastern Nigerian roped pot on a stand
from 9th-10th century – ritual water pot used the cire-perdue or
“lost-wax” process and reveals the vision and technical
accomplishment in this African society
 Roped pot on a stand from
Igbo-Ukwu, eastern Nigeria, 9th- 10th century
• This pot suggests that when we examine art as a cultural
artifact, one of the issues we face concerns the use of
artworks in religious ritual
oWe could consider ritual as separate function of art; in fact, we may
not think of religious ritual as art at all; but ritual often expresses
human communication through the artistic medium
oExample: Music when part of a religious ceremony does this as
well as theatre thus we cannot tell when ritual stops and secular
production starts
oWhen ritual, planned & intended for presentation, uses traditionally
artistic media like music, dance, & theatre, we can study it as art
and also see it as an artifact of its particular culture
• “Art for art’s sake” example: late 19th century – aestheticism
– reacted against Victorian notions that a work of art must
have uplifting, educational, or socially/morally beneficial
characteristics
oArtworks have no reason for being other than being beautiful
oPlaywright, Oscar Wilde – all art was useless thus form rides
victorious over function
oViewed art as the pursuit of perfect beauty & life
 How Should We Perceive and Respond?
• 3 ways to sharpen our aesthetic perception
1. Identify those items that can be seen & heard in works of art
and literature – What is it?
2. Learn terminology relating to those items – What does it do?
3. Understand why and how what we perceive relates to our
response – What is it worth?
 Applying Critical Skills
• Criticism – detailed process of analysis to gain understanding
and appreciation – learning what to look for
oWe need to participate fully
oIt gives us the fullest understanding
oThere is a height of awareness while:
 Examining a work of art in detail
 Establishing its context
 Clarifying its achievement
oAvoid “I like it” or “interesting”
• History has examples of new artistic attempts that met with terrible
receptions from professional critics
oExample: 1912 when Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed Igor
Stravinsky’s ballet Rite of Spring where unconventional music and
dance caused a riot – audiences & critics could not tolerate their
nonconformity to music and ballet but today both are considered
masterpieces
oSamuel Beckett’s 1953 play Waiting for Godot does not have a
plot, characters, or ideas expressed in a conventional manner
 Tramps tell stories to each other, argue, eat some food, and are
interrupted by a character named Pozzo leading a slave, Lucky,
by a rope; after conversation, Lucky & Pozzo leave; end of Act
I, boy enters to announce that Godot will not come today
  In Act II, same occurs then Lucky leads in a blind Pozzo and
tree has sprouted a few leaves; play ends as young boy returns
to indicate that Godot will not arrive that day either
• Value judgments remain personal but some opinions are more
informed than others and represent authoritative judgment
oEven knowledgeable people disagree
• In order to understand what criticism involves, we must
separate descriptive analysis from the act of passing value
judgments
oWe may not like the work we’ve analyzed but we may have
understood something we did not understand before
• Criticism is necessary; we must investigate and describe
 Approaches to Criticism
• Western culture, critical tradition began with Plato (428/427-348
B.C.E.) – focused mainly on artwork’s moral qualities and he attacked
poets and appealed to the worst of human nature
• In contrast, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) & one of Plato’s students
argued for value of imitation and focused on logical & formal
approaches rather than moral ones
• Since Renaissance (1300-1600), Western criticism tackle factors of
moral worth of art and its relationship to nature
• Late 20th century, criticism underwent upheaval to traditional
approaches
oSome questioned importance of the artist altogether especially to
determining the meaning(s) in works of art
oCriticism derives from structures of language in the case of
literature, theatre, cinema, and culture
o“Schools” of criticism – feminist criticism, Freudian criticism,
practical criticism, Marxist criticism, structuralism, deconstruction,
reader-response criticism, etc.
• We will use 2 broad and basic types of criticism:
1. Formal criticism
2. Contextual criticism
 Formal Criticism
• Analysis that applies no external conditions or information
• Tries to explain a work’s total formal aesthetic organization
• When used, we analyze the artwork just as we find it
o Painting – look only within the frame
o Play – analyze only what we see and hear
• Approaches the artwork as a self-contained entity; work must
stand on its own merits
• Formal approach helps us to analyze how an artwork operates
and to decide why the artwork produces the response it does
• Knowledge about how artworks are put together, what they
are, and how they stimulate the senses enhances the critical
process
 Contextual Criticism
• Examination of related information outside the artwork, such as facts
about the artist’s life, his or her culture, social & political conditions
and philosophies, and public and critical responses to the work
• Views artwork as an artifact generated from certain contextual needs,
conditions, and/or attitudes
• Pursue any and all contextual matters that might clarify what happens
in an artwork
• May use the same kind of internal examination followed in formal
approach
 Making Judgments
• Judgment of a work of art’s quality need to include:
1. Artisanship
2. Communication
 Artisanship
• Judging how it has been crafted or made
oRequires knowledge about the medium of the artwork
• Criteria that allows general judgment of artisanship:
oClarity
oInterest
• Clarity: deciding whether the work has coherence
oArtworks compared to onions – allow responders to peel away layers
moving us closer to the core
 Some can peel away all the layers; others only one or two
o Crafted work of art will have a coherence that allows anyone to grasp onto
some layer
• Interest – Crafted works of art use:
1. Universality – the artist’s ability to touch a common
experience or feeling within us
2. Carefully developed structures or focal points that lead us
where the artist intends us to go
3. Freshness of approach that makes us curious to investigate
further
oA great work of art will hold us even if we know the result or story
 Communication
• Evaluating what an artwork tries to say offers more immediate
opportunity for judgment and less need for expertise
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) – 19th century poet,
novelist, and playwright who set out a basic, common-sense approach
to evaluating communication
• Goethe suggests we approach the critical process by 3 questions:
1. What is the artist trying to say?
2. Does he/she succeed?
3. Was the artwork worth the effort?
 Style
• The manner in which artists express themselves constitutes
their style
• Style of any artwork determined by analyzing how the artist
has arranged the characteristics of the medium
oExample: Bach and Handel typify the Baroque style in music as
does the Palace of Versailles
How Can We Analyze Style?
A View Near Volterra
by Corot (1838)
• Curved line to create edges of the forms or shapes in the painting
oRocks, trees, & clouds – do not have crisp, clear edges
• Color areas blend with each other, giving the painting a fuzzy or out-
of-focus appearance
• Value contrast – relationship of black, white, and gray
• Corot uses subtlety in his value contrast; light to dark is gradual with
no stark contrasts
• His brushstroke is apparent: see the individual strokes where paint has
been applied
• Foliage executed by stippling – dabbing the brush to the canvas as one
would dot an “i” with a pencil
• Overall effect is lifelike but we can see in every area his spontaneity
 Guernica
by Pablo Picasso (1937)
• Picasso joins curved & straight lines, placing them in such
relationships that they create movement and dissonance
(unstableness)
• Edges of color areas and forms are sharp and distinct; nothing
soft or fuzzy
• Value contrasts - stark and extreme
oAreas of the highest value (white) force against areas of the lowest
value (black)
oMid or medium (gray) tones appear but play minor role
oTonal areas & absence of brushwork emphasize the starkness of the
work
 The Starry Night
by Vincent van Gogh (1889)
• Uses line in highly active although uniformly curved ways
• Forms and color areas have both hard and soft edges
• Uses outlining to strengthen his images and reduce their
reality like Picasso
• Overall effect of line – sweeping and undulating movement,
highly dynamic and yet far removed from the starkness of
Picasso
• Value contrasts – broad but moderate; ranges from darks
through medium grays to white; all equal in importance
• Brushstroke – gives painting its personality; thousands of
individual brush marks where artist applied paint to canvas
and makes the painting come alive
Exercise Painting
• Hard form and color edges
• Outlining appears
• Curved and straight lines are placed closed together for
contrasting effect (juxtaposed) with effect active and stark
• Darks, grays, and whites appear broadly however, the main
impression remains of strong contrasts – the darkest darks
against the whitest whites
• Brushstroke – not attracting attention (unobtrusive)
 Answer:

Girl Before a Mirror (1932)

by Pablo Picasso
 Style and Culture
• We sometimes recognize differences in style without thinking much
about it
• Our experience or formal training need not be extensive
• Russian Orthodox church is distinguishable by its characteristic icons
• The tomb of the Shirvanshah, Baku, Azerbaijan, from the 15th
century on the previous slide is Muslim, identifiable by its
arch
oDecorative embellishment reflects Islamic prohibition
against depicting human form in an architectural
decoration
 How Does a Style Get Its Name?
• Why is some art called Classical, some Pop, some Baroque,
etc.
• Some styles named hundreds of years after they occurred –
definition from extended, common usage or a historical
viewpoint
oExample: Athenian Greeks whose works we know as Classical,
were centuries removed from the naming of their style
• Some styles coined by the artists themselves – Surrealist
• Some styles come from individual critics
• Must take care when we use labels for artworks
oExample: Romanticism has stylistic characteristics in some art
disciplines but term also describes a broad philosophy of life
• We can ask how same label might identify stylistic
characteristics of 2 or more unrelated art disciplines, such as
painting & music
• Styles do not start and stop on specific dates nor do they
recognize national boundaries