Elements of Visual Arts: Links

For my 1:30-2:30 and 5:30-6:30 humn 1 classes, please click on the links below:

• Shape and Texture
• Line
• Space
• Tone
• Color

Exam Coverage

Dear students,

Discuss the important points of Coleridge, Sainte-Beuve, Eliot, Richards, and Frye's writings. Limit your discussion to at least 150 words. The deadliest deadline for your exam will be on October 21, 2008, twelve noon.

Love lots...

P.S.
Thank Rose for visiting the department and reminding me that I owe you an exam.

For Those Who Got Failing Marks

Dear students,

For those who unfortunately got a failing mark, you need to do some extra-credit projects. These additional activities come in two forms. The first is an art activity, while the other one is a written report. However this chance that I am giving is only for those who have earned a grade not more than 4.0.

GRADES

A Good Example of an Analysis Paper

* sorry for the late post, I've been very busy.

* your exam will be posted either tomorrow or on Friday.

Click link.

A MESSAGE FROM THE MISEDUCATED

If you have questions and clarifications, please find time to meet with me at the Department of Languages and Literature. I usually stay there in the afternoon. For those who have left for their hometown, please post your email ads so I can entertain any questions or requests.

GRADES

ERRATUM

*Your teacher erroneously attributed the “Spoliarium” to Felix Hidalgo. Juan Luna is the artist responsible for the said artwork.

Spoliarium, in 1884 won the gold medal at the Exposicion Nacional de Bellas Artes, held every three years in Madrid. The painting depicts defeated gladiators being dragged off into an unseen pit of corpses. A Roman scene on the surface, the painting also carries an allegorical message of the sufferings of Luna's fellow countrymen and women.

Lady in the Red Shawl

Felix Hidalgo
Oil on Canvas
16 x 11 inches
undated (1870-1880's)

A Gifted Painter Now Almost Forgotten

By Ambeth Ocampo
Philippine Daily InquirerFirst
Posted 01:59:00 10/03/2008

MANILA, Philippines—Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo (1855-1913) is acknowledged as one of the great Filipino painters of the late 19th century. If one of his paintings is available on the art market, it usually comes with a seven-figure price tag. But to say that his friend and contemporary, Juan Luna, overshadowed him is an understatement. Both won medals in the 1884 Madrid Exposition of Fine Arts, but Hidalgo and his silver medal do not quite top Luna’s gold.


Click link to continue reading...

Regarding Your Grades....

I am sorry to say you'll have to wait for another two days for your grades. As I have recently discovered, I am a mere human; with two hands, one body, and one beautiful yet still imperfect brain. Please check on Monday.....

Love lots....

A Note on Buddhist Sand Mandala

The painstaking creation of a sand mandala is a meditative practice, an act of mindfulness. Its consequent destruction represents the inherent impermanence of life, a fundamental principle of the Dharma, or teachings of the Buddha.

buddhistchannel.com

A Note on Art Markets

Museums are only a part pf the current story of the art market, because wealthy collectors worldwide have more buying power. Charles Saatchi has been accused of manipulating the market for the latest young and trendy artists through his sudden shift in purchases or sales. His support of exhibitions like the controversial Sensation show of the young ‘Britpack’ artists has been criticized: through promoting the exhibition, Saatchi raises the value of works that his gallery owns.

Notes on the Art Museum I

Since about 1965 a shift has occurred in museum finding, 1992, almost $700 million was given by corporations to promote culture and the arts. The shift to corporate sources coincides with the rise of the “blockbuster exhibitions”. These exhibitions aim at a broad public appeal and middle-class taste

In the article written Brian Wallis entitled, Selling Nations: International Exhibitions and Cultural Diplomacy, he explains, “Individual nations are compelled to dramatize conventionalized versions of their national images, asserting past glories and amplifying stereotypical differences”.

Curator Susan Vogel of the Center for African Art in New York arranged an exhibit in 1988 entitled Art/Artifacts using varied display techniques to provoke visitors to ponder distinctions between art and non-art.

Announcement from the Miseducated

Dear Students,

Please bring on Thursday felt paper (any color, 8.5 x 11 inches) and a box of oil pastels.

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-Albert Einstein (German-born) physicist (1879-1955)

Sincerely,

XXXXXXX

Miseducated Mentor

Poetry as Word and Act

Literary theory that is focused on poetic debates, among other things, the relative importance of different ways of viewing poems: a poem is both a structure made of words and an event. For the poem conceived as verbal construction, a major question is the relation between meaning and the non-semantic features of language, such as sound and rhythm.

Midterm Exam Announcement

Dear students,

The exam will cover ancient Greek art to Brillo Box. We will still follow the batch 1 and 2 system. I will also follow the official schedule. That’s all.

XXXXX

Miseducated Mentor

Notes on Warhol and His Brillo Boxes

“Why was it a work of art when the objects which resemble it exactly, at least under perceptual criteria, are mere things, or, at best, mere artifacts? But even if artifacts, the parallel between them and what Warhol made were exact. Plato could not discriminate between them as he could between pictures of beds and beds. In fact, the Warhol boxes were pretty good pieces of carpentry.”

Andy Warhol was expert at self-promotion. Obsessed with celebrities, Warhol loved jet-setting and partying. Yet he said, ‘I think it would be terrific if everyone was alike’, and coined the cynical slogan that ‘everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame’. Warhol emerged in the ‘Pop Art’ movement of the 1960s, a movement tied into fashion, popular culture, and politics.

Notes on Richard Wagner

Comic adaptation from the second act of Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal, 1882. Written by Patrick C. Mason, illustrated by P. Craig Russell.

Notes on the Garden of Versailles

Andre Le Notrê was from a family of gardeners called upon by Louis XIV to design a garden grand enough to his image as “The Sun King”. Le Notre spent 50 years of his life upon the magnificent gardens of Versailles.

Notes on Rhetorical Figures

"I thought it was only a metaphor when people said, 'My car died.'"

A Note on Rhetoric

Rhetoric, which has been since classical times, has been the study of the persuasive and expressive resources of language: the techniques of language and thought that can be used to construct effective discourses. Aristotle separated rhetoric form poetics, treating rhetoric as the art of persuasion and poetics as the art of imitation or representation.

Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford U Press: New York, 1997.

A Note on Rococo Art

Rococo is a style of 18th century French art and interior design. Rococo style rooms were designed as total works of art with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, and tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs, and wall paintings. The word Rococo is seen as a combination of the French rocaille, or shell, and the Italian barocco, or Baroque style. Due to Rococo love of shell-like curves and focus on decorative arts, some critics used the term to derogatively imply that the style was frivolous or merely fashion; interestingly, when the term was first used in English in about 1836, it was a colloquialism meaning "old-fashioned". However, since the mid 19th century, the term has been accepted by art historians. While there is still some debate about the historical significance of the style to art in general, Rococo is now widely recognized as a major period in the development of European art.

wikipedia.com

Notes on Baroque Art

The origins of the word baroque are not clear. It may have been derived from the Portuguese barocco or the Spanish barueco to indicate an irregularly shaped pearl. The word itself does not accurately define or even approximate the meaning of the style to which it refers. However, by the end of the 18th century baroque had entered the terminology of art criticism as an epithet leveled against 17th-century art, which many later critics regularly dismissed as too bizarre or strange to merit serious study.

Notes on the Gothic Cathedral

Notes on Hermeneutics

What determines meaning? Sometimes we say that the meaning of an utterance is what someone means by it, as though the intention of a speaker determined meaning. Sometimes we say meaning in text as if meaning were the product of the language itself. Sometimes we say context is what determines meaning: to know what this particular utterance means, you have to look at the circumstances or the historical context in which it figures. Some critics claim that the meaning of text is the experience of the reader, intention, text, context, reader—what determines meaning?

Message from the Sick Miseducated

The following students from my 3:00 to 4:30 pm class are exempted from their humanities 1 midterm examination:

Notes on Gothic Architecture

Midterm Paper

Write a paper on the movie, ‘Princess Mononoke.’ You can choose any of the theories or approaches we have discussed in class. I have decided not to set a minimum number of words; however, make sure that your paper is comprehensive. The same format will be used: one-inch margins, 1.5 line spacing, 11 font size and Arial font type. Please do not forget the title of your written discussion. Also cite your sources. Your paper is due on August 18, 2008.

Princess Mononoke Trailer

Click link for the trailer.

Notes on Gothic Art

Kirby I: A Book of Hours

Beginning in the twelfth century, Gothic painting, sculpture, and architecture quickly became dominant in Europe and remained popular until the Renaissance. The Gothic style originated in Italy and quickly spread throughout Europe, staying dominant for the next 200 years. During the Renaissance, writers criticized it as vulgar and hence named it Gothic art after the Gothic tribes that destroyed the Roman Empire and classicism during the fifth century.

A Note on the Hyper-Protected Principle

Hyper-protected cooperative principle is a basic convention that makes possible the interpretation of literature: the assumption that difficulties, apparent nonsense, digressions, and irrelevancies have a relevant function. 

Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford U Press: New York, 1997.

Notes on Poetics and Hermeneutics

Here there is a basic distinction between two kinds of projects: one, modeled on linguistics, takes meanings as what have to be accounted for and tries to work out how they are possible. The other, by contrasts, starts with forms and seeks to interpret them, tot ell us what they really mean. Poetics starts with attested meanings or effects and ask how they are achieved. Hermeneutics, on the other hand, starts with texts and asks what they mean, seeking to discover new and better interpretations. Hermeneutic models come from the fields of law and religion, where people seek to interpret an authoritative legal or sacred text in order to decide how to act.

Notes on the Ancient Greek Tragedy

Antigone Leads Oedipus out of Thebes

by Charles Francois Jalabeat

Ancient discussions of tragedy introduced one of the most persistent of all theories of art, the imitation theory: art is an imitation of nature or of human life and action. Classical tragedy began in Athens in the sixth century BC as part of spring celebrations of Dionysus, god of the grape harvest, dancing, and drinking.

Notes on Ancient Greek Architecture

By the end of the 7th century BC, two major architectural styles, or orders, emerged that dominated Greek architecture for centuries: Doric and Ionic. The Doric order developed on the Greek mainland and in southern Italy and Sicily, while the Ionic order developed a little later than the Doric order, in Ionia and on some of the Greek islands. In addition to Doric and Ionic, a third order, the Aeolic, developed in northwestern Asia Minor, but died out by the end of the Archaic period, and a fourth, the Corinthian, emerged late in the 5th century BC.

Notes on Ancient Greek Pottery

Geometric Style (c. 1000-700 BC)

• From about 950 to about 750 bc, are called the Geometric period, a term that refers to a primarily abstract style of pottery decoration of the time.
• The lively, rectilinear meander patterns circling the body of the amphora are typical of Geometric pottery design. Greek Funerary Amphora (800 BC)
  

Notes on Shape & Texture

Notes on the Line

Street Art: Fun Use of Space in Visual Art

Elements of Visual Art: Space

Space exists as an illusion in the graphic arts but in sculpture and architecture it is actually present.Techniques in Creating Space in Drawings or Paintings.

1. Overlapping Planes. A way of suggesting depth is by overlapping planes or volumes.
2. Variations in Size.
3. Variations in Color.
4. Position on the Picture Plane. In certain paintings the spatial representation is based upon the position of forms relative to the bottom of the frame.
5. Perspective. Artist often try to show space relationships of things as they appear in real life. When they wish to do so, they use linear perspective and aerial perspective, both which make up what we call as perceptual perspective.

 

Notes on Tone

Value is tonal relationships between light and dark areas in painting. It is also referred to as tone.

Notes on Color

Color is not a permanent property of things. It is derived from light whether natural or artificial. Color is a series of wavelengths which strike our retina. Every ray of light coming from the sun is composed of different waves which vibrate at different speeds. Any object has a color quality called pigmentation, which enables it to absorb some of the colors and reflect only one.

A Note on Cultural Studies

The emergence of cultural studies in the early 70s have revealed two approaches on culture--culture as an expression of people and culture as imposition on the people. This dualism has greatly enriched cultural studies.

Now the relationship between the cultural studies and literary studies is a complicated problem. Arguments about the relation between literary and cultural studies can be grouped around two topics: (1) literary canon and (2) cultural studies.

Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford U Press: New York, 1997.

Notes on Color Harmony

In visual experiences, harmony is something that is pleasing to the eye. It engages the viewer and it creates an inner sense of order, a balance in the visual experience. When something is not harmonious, it's either boring or chaotic. At one extreme is a visual experience that is so bland that the viewer is not engaged. The human brain will reject under-stimulating information. At the other extreme is a visual experience that is so overdone, so chaotic that the viewer can't stand to look at it. The human brain rejects what it can not organize, what it can not understand. The visual task requires that we present a logical structure. Color harmony delivers visual interest and a sense of order.

Color Wheel

Artworks to Remember

In His Infinite Knowledge by Damien Hirst (March 2, 2004)

A Message of Understanding and Friendship from the Miseducated

To my ever understanding and patient students,

Before I explain my absence today, May 21, 2008, I would like to extend my overwhelming appreciation of your infinite ability to love and forgive. I have been blessed by fate for it has given me the opportunity to teach such wonderful, kind and intelligent students.

Artworks to Remember

Australia-Mardayin at Dilebang by John Mawurndjul (2003)

Message from the Miseducated

I am glad to inform everyone that we will have a class tomorrow. I feel happy since I know for a fact that you desire our daily, two-hour, interesting and exciting discussions on art. In addition, I would like to tell everyone to bring their art projects (finished or unfinished) on texture tomorrow. I will allow you to finish your project after which we will finish our discussion on art and culture. Let me end this message with some inspiring words:

“A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.”

-Kenneth Peacock Tynan (2 April 1927 - 26 July 1980)
Influential and often controversial British theatre critic and writer.

Sincerely,

XXXXXX

Miseducated Mentor

Artworks to Remember

The Birth of Venus

Sandro Botticelli (C. 1482-1486)