Introduction to Humanities

1. Introduction to Humanities Review Of the Arts

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. ARCHITECTURE • 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.”

8. DANCE • Moving bodies shaping space. • At its most basic level, the subject matter of dance is abstract motion. • In abstract dance the center of interest is upon visual patterns. • It is rhythmic, unfolding in time, and thus has common ground with music. • Most is accompanied by music.

9. 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.

10. PHOTOGRAPHY • When it became widely available in the 1940’s and 1950’s the images printed on paper were in black-and-white or sepia (brown-and-white). • The success of photography in reproducing realistic scenes and people had an instant impact on painting.