THEORIES OF BEAUTY AND ART

Walastik!
Are you familiar with the term Walastik? Its a Filipino popular expression
equivalent to the English Wow! One version on the origin of the word has
an interesting story. It is said that one time, a circus performer was balancing
cups on the stick, and when he removed the stick, the cups floated on the
air, so the people exclaimed Ang galing o, walang stick! Thus, Walastik
has become a popular expression of amazement. The other version is that
the word came from walastig, which literally means walang tigas. In our
culture, we also say: Walandyu! Hanep! Grabe! Unkaboogable!
It is our usual response to say Walastik! whenever we are presented with
anything beautiful, may it be a breathtaking sunset, a blooming flower, a
colorful jeepney, a sexy lady or a handsome hunk. For the opposite term, we
exclaim Sus, Yak! and nowadays the popular expression Eeew! Beauty,
as well as ugliness, are facts of human experience.

When you look at the pictures of these four women, most probably you
would be inclined to focus your attention on one of them you consider the
most beautiful. You and your friends may not agree with your respective
choices, but this is understandable because you have different personalities,
cultural backgrounds, individual tastes and personal experiences which
shape your standard of looking at things.
In the previous lesson, you learned about the subjects of art. One reason why
these subjects are chosen by the artist is because they are things of beauty.
It is our usual reaction that we would not look at a work of art or any object if

it is not beautiful. Art, itself, is beauty. What makes things beautiful is

therefore a basic and significant topic to take up and understand in the
appreciation of art.
We observe that things may either be beautiful or ugly. Beauty also emerges
on different levels. This common experience brings out some profound and
interesting queries: What constitutes beauty? Why a person or a thing is
more beautiful than another? This study of the theory or philosophy of
beauty is called AESTHETICS. In this module, you will learn about various
aesthetic theories such as Conventionalism, Formalism, Functionalism,
Hedonism, Platonism, and Psychoanalytic Theory. They consider the
experience and reality of beauty and ugliness based on different concepts
and from different perspectives.
The main benefit that you will acquire from this module is an awareness of a
deep, philosophical concept on the experience and reality of beauty and art.
And as you understand the various aesthetic theories, you would also reflect
about your own personality and individual choices and style, and you would
become proud of your own culture and tradition and learn and respect those
of others.
THE VISUAL ELEMENTS

To see is to believe

The huge eye in the painting by Rene Magritte, The False Mirror, is your own
eye! Its the eye that serves as a window by which your soul from the
inside looks at the world outside. The word seeing connotes an activity not
only of your eyes, but of your heart and of your mind too. Thats why
seeing is believing, and it is knowing as well. I am sure you already
had an experience that, after being in the state of ignorance and doubt, you
exclaimed: Ahh, I see. because suddenly you are enlightened as if rays of
light shine into the darkness of your soul, so that after looking, you start
feeling and understanding.
As the mind and the heart are stimulated by the eyes, the appreciation of art
also begins in seeing. The visual elements are what you see with your eyes
when you look at paintings. To introduce you to some of them, download a
visual presentation: What this module is about.The combination of elements,
as they are perceived as a whole by the spectator, make up the form,
composition or design of the artwork.

You learned in the previous lessons about the analysis of the subject-content.
The visual elements are the first level of this analysis in the appreciation of
painting. In music they are called auditory elements like rhythm, pitch,
melody, harmony. In literature such as a novel, these elements are
characters, setting, theme, plot.
The study of visual elements is beneficial for you as a student. It will make
you analyze a painting in details and notice the minute and meticulous parts
of the composition. It will therefore improve your sensitivity and acuity to the
objects you perceive in your surroundings. It will sharpen your senses of
sight, of hearing and of touch as you understand the operation and your
encounter of perceptual stimuli not only in the arts but also in ordinary
experiences.

THE FORMAL PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN IN THE VISUAL ARTS

Art in a Balance

Do you know the book by Al Gore entitled Earth in a Balance? The author
talks about the inevitable devastation of the planet due to environmental
degradation caused by peoples abuse and exploitation of nature. Art in a
balance, however, is not about the destruction but about the composition of
art based on human order and design. And exactly, balance is one of the
principles of art composition.
Like in Gores book, there are many important ideas and facts that you will
learn in this module. To introduce you to some of them, view this visual
presentation: What this module is about. These are basic information
towards understanding the formal principles of design in the visual arts.
You learned from the previous lessons the various points for analyzing art
such as the subject, the medium and the function. Another point is the
FORM. Also called design, composition or organization, the form of art
asks the question: How are the elements put together? Particularly in

painting, it refers to the certain ways or standards by which the subject of art
or the visual characters are placed by the painter in the picture-plane to
produce beautiful effect in the sight of the spectator. You may notice this, for
example, in The Last Supper.

The 13 people in the painting are arranged by Leonardo so that Jesus is at

the center, and that the 12 apostles are equally divided into two with six of
them on the left and the other six on the right. This is a perfectly,
symmetrically balanced composition which is typical of the Florentine School
of Painting during the high Renaissance period. Numerous other
arrangements are also possible and have been applied in other works of
painting at different times in the history of art.
As you understand the formal principles in the arts, you will benefit
from this module in terms of developing your visual sensitivity and
aesthetic taste. You may apply what you learn to practical concerns
such as in artistically arranging the furniture in your living room or
in taking pictures of people, sceneries and objects. This will also
teach you to find beauty out of little things like in the symmetrical
wings of a butterfly, the curvilinear shape of a water faucet or the
elegant contour of a Gillette blade, as they exhibit inherent design
and composition.

Size does matter

If size matters in Godzilla, it is in the arts too. Size refers to the bulkiness of a
physical thing. The objective size of a thing compared with that of another is
called scale. But the art of representational painting is concerned
with relative size of an object from the sight of the viewer. In reality, the
moon is so much bigger than a basket ball, but in appearance, the ball looks
bigger because it is so much nearer to the perceiver while the moon is
thousands of miles away. Being visual, painting is the projection not of the
real but of the apparent sizes of things.
Look intently at this pointillist masterpiece by George Seurat. What do you
notice in it, particularly about the sizes of the people in the painting?

Do you notice that the woman standing on the right side is bigger than the
woman at the center? In fact, you see that the people in the painting have
different sizes. What makes up this difference may be explained by the
concept of perspective as it is applied in the arts. Perspective is an
interesting visual technique and element in painting which heightens ones
aesthetic sense and appreciation.
In the previous module, you learned about the principles of design.
Perspective is a supporting principle which is based on the existence of
things in space and on the projection of objects in the picture-plane. In the
art of painting, it is used to produce balance, dominance and focusing.

The study of perspective will enhance your visual

awareness. It will make you see beauty and details in your
ordinary experiences such as when you behold the full
moon lying along the horizon, or when you look at the
walls, floor and ceiling as you walk along the corridor.
Consider the design on the right. Do you see a corridor, a
tunnel, a pyramid with flat top, a megaphone or an
empty balikbayan box? How you see all of these is
because of perspective.

I did it my way!

I did it my way, thus ends Frank Sinatras famous song. Truly, each one of
us has our own way of doing things. Its my uniqueness, your uniqueness. So
as people have various peculiarities, works of art have different STYLES.
Palestrina, Mozart, Michael Jackson and April Boy are all musical composers,
but they produce entirely different types of music. What makes up the
difference is their own individual style of art.

Look at the man in the pictures above. He is Salvador Dali, a Spanish painter.
Do you find him somewhat weird? It is even said that one time he attended a
public lecture as the speaker wearing only a bathrobe. But it is exactly his
unconventional style which made him the most famous surrealist painter in
the world. Van Gogh also has a lot of self-portraits which show his personality
that had become the basis of his expressionist style of painting.
The previous lesson taught you about the subject and the visual elements
which concerns the artwork itself. Now, another focus of analysis is the artist
himself or herself. Style is a certain way by which the artists create their
piece which makes one of them unique from the others. Some may belong to
the same group with the same style because they share a common subject,
genre, form, principle or ideology. So in music, there are compositions
distinct from one another such as classical, jazz, rock, pop, rap, mellow and
indigenous sounds. In the art of painting too, there are works classified as
classicist, impressionist, cubist, surrealist and many others. When you
appreciate art, you too make up your own style. The style you like most
indicates not only your individual personality but also your breeding,
dispositions and beliefs, your historical situatedness, or even your level of
educational attainment.
This module will benefit you as a student because it would make you aware
of your unique personality as you discover style you appreciate most in the
arts. This will also make you aware of the development of art in line with the
history of Western civilization together with the development of other branch
of learning such as philosophy, psychology, political science and sociology.
The understanding of the evolution of artistic styles is an important factor
towards the appreciation of art because it makes the students learn the
history and theories of art as well as the biography of the artists.