Essay Example on Exploring Human Values Through Art

Introduction

Humanities refer to an academic discipline that focuses on human culture and society. Art, as used in humanities, gets grouped as either sculpture, drawing, painting, or even architecture work. The artwork gets used to portray human values. Art expresses and explores human values that link them together (Dumitru, 2019). An individual understanding of art deepens when they try to give their responses of it by explaining what the artist might be thinking while placing those backgrounds and through their choice of colors (Jacobus and Martin, 1978). The study focuses on reflecting an art obtained from the "humanities through the arts" textbook, which then acts as an inspiration to my art piece.

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Inspiration Piece

Siqueiros' art inspired me in how it can display feelings, trauma, and memories of individuals who survived the Spanish war. The grief and sorrow in their hearts are visible from the first view of the art. Using a child to display their feelings touches the spirit of each viewer where they tend to pity the child. His painting was symbolic of the aftermath that followed after the war. The chaos surrounding the child symbolizes the tragedy and destruction that befell the people after the war (Jacobus and Martin, 1978). The texture of the paint appears to be grungy and rough with broken canons, shrapnel, and shells all over. The debris surrounding the baby seems to have sharp corners and edges, and the red color on the ground looks like dried human blood and left body parts (Jacobus and Martin, 1978). The child is on red cloth too, which in this case may be symbolizing fresh blood that seems to be oozing from the injured bodies of individuals after the war.

My Art Piece

The drawing evokes strong emotions that a woman is expressing after experiencing some life's desperations. The woman seems to be struggling with her inner feelings and in much suffering. She cannot keep calm and thus decides to scream and cry it out to relieve herself from the anger. The act of her closing the eyes and scratching her cheeks in desperation shows the pain in her heart is intense. The veins in her hands and neck are also visible to try to tell the viewer the intensity of the woman's anger. One can count the upper jaw teeth since her mouth is wide open while screaming. The color applied in the drawing is white and black. The white symbolizes goodness and black evil. Thus, the woman may be a good person, but life's challenges are sophisticating her inner emotions.

From viewing figures 1 and 2, one can see the sorrow and desperations in both artworks. Both the child and the woman and screaming out their emotions due to the difficulties they have experienced in life. Human's sorrow is a theme that gets portrayed in both artworks. The difference between the two artworks is in the texture and the medium used. Figure 1 uses painting and is on a rough texture, while figure 2 uses a graphite pencil medium, and the texture is dull. The type of medium an artist uses affects how the viewer will interpret it. Paints are symbolic and aid the view capture the full intention of the artist. The two arts also have the same tone in that they both show the dark values of the society by the use of dark colors.

References

Dumitru, D. (2019). Creating meaning. The importance of Arts, Humanities, and Culture for critical thinking development. Studies in Higher Education, 44(5), 870-879. Retrieved from http://crithinkedu.utad.pt/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/6_Dumitru_2019_Creating-meaning.-The-importance-of-Arts-Humanities-and-Culture-for-critical-thinking-development.pdf

Jacobus, L. A., & Martin, F. D. (1978). The Humanities through the Arts. New York: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2a83/cad883a3ee62ef247e265f0672c098b0e5bd.pdf