Meaning, Importance, Scope of Humanities

ABINAL, Sittie Faisah FAJARDO, Anna Marie KAW, John REVILLA, Maria Cecilia Flor Hadji-unos

ETYMOLOGY  It comes from the Latin word, “HUMANUS,” which means human, cultured, and refined.  The oldest and most important means of expression developed by man.  It has various connotation depending on the political, economic, social, artistic and cultural forces that surround the different historical eras.

DEFINITION  Today, humanities refers to a loosely defined group of cultural subject areas.  It refers to the: • Visual Arts – architecture, painting, and sculpture. • Performing Arts – music, dance, theater or drama, literature  It is concerned with human thought, feelings and relations.  It is concerned with the importance of human being and his or her feelings and how these are expressed.

IMPORTANCE  It constitutes one of the oldest and most important means of expression developed by man.  A language charged with feeling and significance.  It appears to be universal.  As a cultural force, it is pervasive and potent.  It shows itself even in primitive societies.

PURPOSES OF ART To create beauty.  To provide decorations.

 To reveal truth.  To immortalize.

ART  It concerns itself with the communication of certain ideas and feelings by means of sensuous medium– color, sound, bronze, marble, words and film.  This medium is fashioned into a symbolic language marked by beauty of design and coherence of form.  It appeals to our mind, arouses our emotions, kindles our imagination, and enhances our senses.

PURPOSES OF ART To express religious values.  To record and commemorate experience. To create order and harmony.

ELEMENTS OF ART 1. Line  An element of art that is used to define shape, contours, and outlines, also to suggest mass and volume. It may be a continuous mark made on a surface with a pointed tool or implied by the edges of shapes and forms.

ELEMENTS OF ART 2. Color  comes from light; if it weren’t for light we would have no color. Light rays move in a straight path from a light source. Within this light rays are all the rays of colors in the spectrum or rainbow. Shining a light into a prism will create a rainbow of colors because it separates the color of the spectrum.

ELEMENTS OF ART 3. Shape  When a line crosses itself or intersects with other lines to enclose a space it creates a shape. Shape is twodimensional it has heights and width but no depth.

ELEMENTS OF ART 4. Space  refers to the arrangement of objects on the picture plane. The picture plane is the surface of your drawing paper or canvas. A twodimensional piece of art has heights and width but no depth. The illusion of depth can be achieved by using perspective. This is the technique used to have your picture look likes it is moving to the distance like a landscape or cityscape.

ELEMENTS OF ART 5. Texture  Texture is the surface quality of an object. A rock may be rough and jagged. A piece of silk may be soft and smooth and your desk may feel hard and smooth. Texture also refers to the way a picture is made to look rough or smooth.

ELEMENTS OF ART 6. Value  Value is the range of lightness and darkness within a picture. Value is created by a light source that shines on an object creating highlights and shadows. It also illuminates the local or actual color of the subject. Value creates depth within a picture making an object look three dimensional with highlights and cast shadows, or in a landscape where it gets lighter in value as it recedes to the background giving the illusion of depth.

VISUAL ART  The art that we perceive through our eyes.

 It involves not only painting and sculpture but include such things as clothes, households appliances, and the furnishings of our homes, schools, churches, and other buildings.  The AESTHETIC aspects of any work– a painting, song, story, dance or play– those things make it an art.  Aesthetics refers to the forms and psychological effects of arts.

MUSIC  The art of combining and regulating sounds of varying pitch to produce compositions, expressing various ideas and emotions.  Its primary function is to entertain.

 It deals with emotions.  It is a pure art. Thus, it enables it to convey emotions with great intensity and can affect people directly.

DANCE  It is the most direct of the arts for it makes use of the human body as its medium.  It springs from our love for expressive gestures, release of tension through rhythmic movement.

 It heightens the pleasure of being, and at the same time mirrors the life of society.  Primitives dance – the dance of the older times in the barrio folks.  Non-primitives – the dance of the present time in the city.

DANCE  Bagobo – to show gratitude to the spirits “for success in war or domestic affair.  Indians – to give thanks for a harvest.  Mexicans – to celebrate religious festival.  Dance is uniquely able to intensify moods and emotions and to deepen and dignify the feelings of all.

DRAMA  A group of people who act out the plot to get across to the audience the idea the author is trying to express.  It may be a comedy, tragedy, mystery, musical or melodrama.

 Stage – the place for reenacting the joys and problems of life, a place where playwright strips life of nonessentials and deals with basic and important issues.

MOTION PICTURE  A popular addition to the various forms of the theater.

 Radio – makes available drama for auditory sense and the imagination.  Television, theatrical productions – combine art forms.

PLAY AND OPERA Play- a form of literature where scenery and costume provide visual arts and music may serve as a background to set the mood or to serve as part of the plot.  Opera – a drama set to music. Thus, it is a form of the theater.  Theater – combines several of the arts.

WHAT THE ARTS HAVE IN COMMON  They are concerned with emotions, with our feelings about things.  Emotions are part of our basic nature.  People experience excitement, pleasure, anger, and all other emotional states in a way which is very different from their intellectual responses.