This document discusses key concepts for understanding and evaluating the arts. It addresses topics like creativity, aesthetics, communication, symbols, different types of arts, the purpose of art, its functions, and perception. For each topic, it poses questions to help guide understanding, such as how creativity takes chaos and forms new inventions, whether beauty is an emotional or intellectual response, and how art serves therapeutic functions. The overall document serves to provide a framework for discussing and analyzing various aspects of the arts.

1. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Ways of
knowing
1. How do the
humanities differ
from the sciences in
“ways of knowing?”
2. How are the
humanities a way of
“seeing” and
“listening” to the
world?
René Magritte, The Treachery of Images 1928 – 1929

2. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Creativity
1. Define the term
“creativity”?
2. How do humans
take chaos and
uncertainty and
crystallize new
forms and new
inno-ventions?
3. What does it mean
to be a “creative” (a
creative person)?
Pablo Picasso, Guernica 1937

3. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Aesthetics
1. What is beauty?
How do we
separate beauty
from pleasure,
prettiness, and
cuteness?
2. Is beauty an
emotional response
or an intellectual
response?
Wassily Kandinksy, Cossacks (Part of the Composition IV)1910

4. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Communication
1. Why do artists need
viewers/ audiences
to complete the
artistic experience?
2. What are the
differences
between reaction
and interaction?
3. How is art an active
experience, not just
a passive endeavor?
Allan Kaprow, The Happening 1961 – 1962

5. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Symbols
1. How does the
symbol help foster
commun-ication?
2. How does the
symbol force
interpretation and
meaning?
3. How has our
language today
become more
symbolic?
Charles K. Bliss, Blissymbols or Blissymbolics 1949

6. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Applied Arts
1. What is the difference
between “fine arts”
and “applied arts”?
2. What is the difference
between “high”
culture and “low”
culture?
3. Why are these loaded
terms? What
connotations do the
bring?
Akan ethnic group of South Ghana, Kente cloth, also known as nwentom

7. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Purpose
1. Does art need to
serve a purpose?
Should art serve a
purpose?
2. Why do we create?
What motivates us
to be artistic?
3. Why is creating art
a risk?
Woman in traditional Maharashtra Saree

8. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Functions
1. How does art serve
a therapeutic
function?
2. What is the
significance of
artifacts?
3. What if art simply
exists for art’s sake?
Should we support
this?
Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Raven Ceremony

9. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Perception
1. How do we choose
to or not to engage
art?
2. How are the arts a
sensory
experience?
3. How are the arts an
intellectual
experience?
4. What is form?
Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain 2012

10. What are the arts? How do we respond to and evaluate the arts?
ways creativity aesthetics communication symbols applied arts purpose functions perception evaluating
Evaluating
1. What is the
difference between
formal evaluation/
criticism and our
intuitive
experience?
2. Why should we
describe and
analyze before
interpret and
judge?
Mark Rothko, No. 3/No. 13 (Magenta, Black, Green on Orange 1949