This document discusses different types of subjects that can be depicted in visual artworks, including representational/figurative art which aims to represent actual objects from reality, and non-representational/non-objective art which does not depict recognizable people, places, or things. Specific subjects that are outlined include history, religion, mythology, nature, genre, portraits, nudes, still life, surrealism, and abstraction. Characteristics of each subject type are provided.

2. • Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Region is an art produced at the present
period in time. A new group was needed negotiate the actual aesthetic breakaway
from the established canon to the abstract, expressionist, symbolist and other
modes of creative expression characteristic of the art of the modern world.
• Contemporary art is the art of today, produced by artists who are living in our
time. It provides opportunities to reflect on society and the issues that are
important to us and the world. It is part of a cultural dialogue that concerns larger
contextual frameworks such as identity, family, community, and nationality.
• The newest form of art.
• Statement that an artist makes about life, thoughts, ideas, beliefs and many other
things that define human life (Ramirez, 2016)

3. • CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS
1.It is not confined in the museum.
2.It practices a different way of selling art works.
3.Many contemporary artists are self-taught and did not have formal education.
4.It has a variety of materials or medium to choose from
5.It’s artists sometimes employ the help of fabrications, carpenters, electricians,
or welders in “constructing” artworks.

4. The traditional arts in the Philippines includes folk architecture, maritime
transport, famous sculpture in the Philippines, weaving, carving, folk
performing arts, folk (oral) literature, folk graphic and plastic arts, ornament,
pottery, and other artistic expressions of traditional culture.
Different Contemporary Art Techniques and Performance Practices
• SUBJECT
In almost all art forms—painting, sculpture, photography, music,
literature, theatre, or dance—there is a subject that serves as the foundation of
the creation of the work of art. The subject matter is the most obvious aspect of
an artwork. It is what the work of art depicts or represents. It may be a person,
an object, a scene, or an event. The subject provides the answer to the
question: What is the work of art all about?

5. Subject vs. Content
The subject matter is the literal, visible image in a work while content includes
the connotative, symbolic, and suggestive aspects of the image. The subject matter is
the subject of the artwork, e.g., still life, portrait, landscape, etc. while content is not
subject or things in the work of art but it is the communication of ideas, feelings and
reactions connected with the subject. When we look at an artwork its content is
what is sensed rather than what can be analyzed. It is the ultimate reason for
creating art.
• Types of Visual Art According to Subject
There are two basic types of Visual Art according to the subject matter.
a)Representational/Figurative Art - aims to represent actual objects or subjects from
reality. They are artworks which are based on images which can be found in the
objective world, or at least in the artist's imagination; i.e., images which can
perhaps be named or recognized.

6. Subcategories under representational art:
 Realism
 Impressionism
 Idealism
 Stylization
Non-Representational/ Non-Objective Art - another way to refer to non-
representational art. Essentially, the artwork does not represent or depict a person,
place, or thing in the natural world. Usually, the content of the work is its colour,
shapes, brushstrokes, size, scale, and, in some cases, its process.
Architecture is mostly non-objective or non-representational. It does not depict or
portray a subject. It is its own for, Music is also mostly non-objective or non-
representational although some music depicts a subject.

7. Ways to present subject matter in visual arts.
Subjects of art may be classified into the following:
1. History 6. Portrait
2. Religion 7. Nude
3. Mythology 8. Still Life
4. Nature 9. The Surreal
5. Genre 10. Abstract

8. 1.HISTORY
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather
than an artistic style. Historical paintings depict a moment in history rather than a
stationary subject such as a portrait. The events depicted in historical paintings
are significant rather than scenes of everyday life.
History paintings can include a range of subjects and topics. The
paintings often illustrate a part of a story or a significant event.

9. 2.RELIGION
There are many ways of defining
religious art. Religious art is:
1.any artwork that has a Christian or
Biblical theme (Christian art); or
2.any artwork which illustrates the
worship of any god, or deity; or
3. any artwork with an Islamic,
Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Juche Judaic,
Bahai, or Jainist theme, or any art
depicting themes of the Shinto, Cao
Dai or traditional Chinese religions;
or
4. any artistic imagery using religious
inspiration and motifs and is often
intended to uplift the mind to the

10. 3.MYTHOLOGY
Mythological art is a term used to describe
art forms that draw on myth for their
subject matter. The characters in myths are
usually gods, supernatural heroes, and
humans involved in extraordinary events or
circumstances in time that is unspecified
but which is understood as existing apart
from ordinary human experience.

11. 4.NATURE
a. Landscape
The landscape is a painting, drawing, or photograph which
covers the depiction of outdoor or natural scenery such as mountains,
valleys, trees, rivers, and forests.The composition of a landscape painting
is usually a wide view.The sky is almost always included in the view, and
the weather is often an element of the image.

12. b. Cityscape
A cityscape is a painting, drawing, or photograph with
urban scenery or the urban environment as its primary focus. It is the
urban equivalent of a landscape. Townscape is roughly synonymous with
cityscape, though it implies the same difference in urban size and density
(and even modernity) implicit in the difference between the words city
and town.

13. d. Flora
By definition, flora is a word of Latin origin referring to
Flora, the goddess of flowers. Flora can refer to a group of plants, a
disquisition of a group of plants, as well as to bacteria. Flora is the root of
the word floral, which means pertaining to flowers. A floral art is a
painting, drawing, or photograph with flowers as its primary focus.

14. e. Fauna
Fauna can refer to the animal life or classification of animals of a
certain region, time period, or environment. Fauna is also of Latin origin. In
Roman Mythology, Fauna was the sister of Faunus, a good spirit of the forest
and plains. Animal style art is characterized by its emphasis on animal imagery
as its primary subject matter.

15. 5. GENRE
A genre is a painting, photograph, or other artistic representation of
subjects from everyday life, usually small in scale. Developed particularly in
Holland in the seventeenth century, most typically with scenes of peasant life
or drinking in taverns. Genre painting is one of the five genres, or types of
painting, established in the seventeenth century.

16. . PORTRAIT
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic
representation of a person.The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and
even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography, a portrait is
generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A
portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer in
order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer.

17. 7. NUDE
The nude figure is mainly a tradition inWestern art and has been used
to express ideals of male and female beauty and other human qualities.The
nude is a work of fine art that has as its primary subject the unclothed human
body.The nude evokes many contradictory things. Historically, the nude figure
has been seen as representing innocence and purity as well as sensuality and
sexuality.The artistic nude can be Apollonian, showing the harmonies of sacred
geometry as embodied in the human form, or it can be Dionysian, expressing
unconstrained energy or emotion. Power and weakness, pride and shame,
pleasure and pain: all of these are the experiences of being in the flesh, and all
can be shown in the image of the flesh.

18. 8. STILL LIFE
A still life is one of the principal genres or subject types of Western art.
Essentially, the subject matter or a still life Painting or sculpture is anything that
does not move or is dead. So, still life includes a.in. of man-made or natural
object's, anything flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish, gam, wine and so on. Still life
can be a celebration of material pleasures such as food and wine, or often a
warning of the ephemerality of these pleasures and of the brevity of human life.
In modern art simple still life arrangements have often been used as a relatively
neutral basis for the formal experiment, for example by Paul Cezanne and the
Cubist painters.

19. THE SURREAL
Surrealistic feasted on the unconscious.They believed that Freud’s
theories on dreams, ego, superego and the id opened doors to the authentic self
and a truer reality (the “surreal”).The word “surreal” is associated with strange
juxtapositions or absurd combinations, like those experienced in
dreams. Surrealistic art explores the marvelous and the irrational as a valid form of
reality, in an effort to make art ambiguous and strange. By giving impressions to
what in the subconscious, surrealists compose dreamlike scenes that show an
irrational arrangement objects.The images are recognizable but are combined
with fantastic and unnatural relationships.

20. 10. ABSTRACT
The word abstract strictly speaking means to separate or withdraw
something from something else. In that sense, abstract art applies to art in which
the artist has started with some visible object and abstracted elements from it to
arrive at a more or less simplified or schematized form.Artists often "abstract"
objects by changing, simplifying, or exaggerating what they see. In some abstract
works, enough of the likeness has been retained to represent real things. In others,
the original objects have been reduced to simple geometric shapes and they can be
rarely identified unless the artist has named them in his title. Abstraction can also
happen when the artist decides to view the subjects in a non-traditional manner.