Humanities and Art Appreciation Lecture Notes

Vocabulary flashcards covering fundamental definitions, branches, technical elements, art styles, and appreciation principles from the lecture transcript.

Humanities

A set of academic disciplines derived from the Latin word humanus (meaning human) where man is the center, recording and interpreting man's thinking, feeling, aspirations, failures, and conduct.

St. Thomas Aquinas' View on Art

The philosophical idea that art is opposite to the practicalities of life, operating beyond material needs such as food, money, or clothing.

Painting

A fine art form whose primary process involves applying color or pigment to a surface.

Literature

A fine art form whose primary medium is written words, classified into prose and poetry.

Dancing

A performing art that combines rhythmic movements of the feet, hands, and body, with an aesthetic element seen in the unity and harmony of movements.

Ballet

A performing art stage performance that narrates a story by combining dance and music without dialogue.

Singing / Music

The art of putting sounds together in order, using human voices, instruments, or a combination of both as mediums.

Movie

A motion picture art form that blends together the fundamental elements of music, painting, and literature.

Theatre

A stage performance form of a play or drama whose basic medium is dialogue.

Sculpture

A three-dimensional practical art involving breaking or piecing together hard stone or other shapeable materials to represent something imagined or real.

Architecture

The practical art of designing and constructing buildings or other structures using materials like concrete, brick, wood, steel, glass, and plaster.

Unification Thought Theory

A theory arguing that decadent art stems from a decadent culture, and that art's basic purpose is to move away from fame or monetary gain to please God.

Beauty

The value given by the artist (giver) and received by the appreciator (receiver), measured by the stimulation it creates in the appreciator.

Harmony in Art

The deliberate arrangement of materials or items by an artist in alignment with their purpose to achieve beauty.

Vertical Line

A straight line rising perpendicularly from a level surface upright, implying ambition, authority, majesty, respect, and dignity.

Horizontal Line

A straight line parallel to the horizon that suggests repose and serenity.

Diagonal Line

A straight line running in a slanting direction that implies actions and movements.

Curved Lines

Lines formed by a gradual change in direction that suggest grace, movements, flexibility, and joyousness.

Circle

A curved line formed by points in a plane that are equidistant from a fixed center point.

Lunet

A kind of curved line formed like a crescent.

Oblong

A curved form identified by its spherical shape and elongation in one dimension.

Hue

The attribute that refers to the name of the color itself.

Primary Hues

The core color hues consisting of blue, red, and yellow.

Secondary Hues

Hues produced by mixing equal parts of primary hues: orange, green, and violet.

Warm Colors

Colors associated with sources of heat (red, orange, yellow) that imply cheerfulness, joy, actions, life, and happiness.

Cool Colors

Colors associated with distance and calm (blue, blue-green, blue-violet) that suggest soberness, restfulness, and inconspicuousness.

Related Color Harmonies

Color groupings based on tones of one hue (monochromatic) or two to three neighboring hues on the color circle (adjacent/neighboring harmony).

Contrasted Color Harmonies

Color groupings based on the disagreement or opposition of hues that give a beautiful effect when properly harmonized.

Value

The relative lightness or darkness of a color, or the quality of light and dark.

Intensity

The brightness or darkness of a color, or the thickness of color applied to express emotion as seen in Fauvism.

Texture

An element of visual art representing surface characteristics and sense of touch (such as rough, smooth, fine, coarse, shiny, or dull).

Perspective

A painter's technique to make art objects appear in depth or in the distance using converging lines and smaller background figures.

Chiaroscuro

A pictorial technique taken from the Italian words chiaro (light) and oscuro (dark), representing images using light and shade without colors.

Renaissance

An art movement signifying the rebirth or revival of classical Greek and Roman art, adhering to standards of balance, harmony, proportions, and intellectual order.

Mannerism

An artistic style situated between High Renaissance and Baroque derived from the Italian word maniera (meaning style), using classic Renaissance forms on surfaces like marble, slate, and frescoes with stucco decoration.

Baroque Art

An art movement flourishing in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries derived from barocco (an ill-shaped pearl), characterized by overly ornamented designs, curved/zigzag lines, and rejection of straight lines.

Classicism

An artistic style adhering to traditional aesthetic principles of Greek and Roman work, characterized by clarity, balance, order, unity, dignity, and symmetry.

Romanticism

An 18th- and 19th-century movement emphasizing the individual, subjective, irrational, and imaginative, often using impassioned landscapes and the horse as a motif.

Gothic Art

An architectural and art style recognizable by pointed arches and ribbed vaults that exemplify faith and an upright position leading to God.

Modernism

An artistic movement derived from the Latin modo (belonging today) that flourished in 1940s-1960s Paris, characterized by simple shapes, modern artificial materials, and breaking away from the past.

Suttee

An Indian cultural practice mentioned in Tagore's Mahamaya in which a widow is burned on her dead husband's funeral pyre to demonstrate grief.

Empathy in Art Appreciation

A subjective prerequisite to art appreciation where the viewer sympathizes with the sorrow of characters to become closer to the artwork and achieve joy.