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SECTION 2
Text 1. ART
Pre-reading Tasks
1. What do you know about ART and its history? What is the origin of this
term? (5–6 sentences)
2. Practice the pronunciation of the words from the text. When in doubt use
a dictionary.
Philosophy, aesthetics, realist, objectivist, relativist,
romantic, idealist,
pre-historic art, contemporary art, Indo-European, Latin,
creative art, fine art.
3. Find the following words in a dictionary and memorize their meanings.
abbreviation
appeal
arrange
arrangement
consideration
creator
definition
deliberately
elusive
encompass
engage
environment
evaluation
explore
humankind
philosophy
prominence
root
rough
sense
sensibility
stimulate
theory
therefore
thinker
usage
vehicle
4. Read the text.
Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way
that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of
human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music,
literature, film, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of
art is explored in a
branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.
The definition and evaluation of art has become especially problematic
since the early 20
th
century. Richard Wollheim distinguishes three approaches:
the Realist, whereby aesthetic quality is an absolute value independent of any
human view; the Objectivist, whereby it is also an absolute value, but is
dependent on general human experience; and the
Relativist position, whereby
it is not an absolute value, but depends on, and varies with, the human
experience of different humans. An object may be characterized by the
intentions, or lack thereof, of its creator, regardless of its apparent purpose.
Traditionally, the term ‘art’ was used to refer to any skill or mastery. This
conception changed during the Romantic period, when art came to be seen as
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“a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and
science”. Generally, art is made with the intention of stimulating thoughts and
emotions.
The nature of art has been described by Richard Wollheim as “one of the
most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture”. It has been defined
as a vehicle for the expression or communication of emotions and ideas. Leo
Tolstoy identified art as a use of indirect means to communicate from one
person to another. Benedetto Croce and R.G. Collingwood advanced the
idealist view that
art expresses emotions, and that the work of art therefore
essentially exists in the mind of the creator. The theory of art as form has its
roots in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and was developed in the early
twentieth century by Roger Fry and Clive Bell.
The most common usage of the word “art,” which rose to prominence after
1750, is understood to denote skill used to produce an aesthetic result.
Britannica Online defines it as “the use of skill and imagination in the creation
of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with
others.” By any of these
definitions of the word, artistic works have existed for
almost as long as humankind: from early pre-historic art to contemporary art.
The first and broadest sense of
art is the one that has remained closest to the
older Latin meaning, which roughly translates to “skill” or “craft,” and also
from an Indo-European root meaning “arrangement” or “to arrange”.
The second and more recent sense of the word
art is as an abbreviation for
creative art or
fine art. Fine art means that a skill is being used to
express the
artist’s creativity, or to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities, or to draw
the audience towards consideration of the finer things.
Art can describe several things: a study of creative skill, a process of using
the creative skill, a product of the creative skill, or the audience’s experience
with the creative skill. Art is something that stimulates an individual's
thoughts, emotions, beliefs, or ideas through the senses. It is also an
expression of an idea and it can take many different
forms and serve many
different purposes.
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