In this section, you will hear a mini lecture. You wil hear the lecture once only. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked but you will need them to complete a gap-filling text after the mini lecture.When the lecture is over, you wil be given 2 mins to check your notes,and in another 10 mins to complete the gap-filling text on the answer sheet 1.
Good morning, today's lecture is the very first fo a series of lectures on the art history. so i would like to spend some time discussing with you the following topic:
why do we need to study art history and what can we learn from it.
First of all. I'd say if you study art history it might be a good way to learn more
about a culture than is possible to learn in general history classes. You know most
typica history courses concentrate on politics,economics and war, but art history
focusses on much more than this. because art reflects not only the political values
of people bu also their religious beliefs, emotions etc., in addition, information
about the daily activities of our ancestors can be provided by art, like what people
did for a living, what kind of dress they wore what ceremonies they held, etc. In
short, art can express the essential qualities of a time and a place and the study of
it clearly offers us a deeper understanding than can be found in most history books
and enable us to learn more things about human society anad civilization. The
second point I would like to make is about the type of information. In history books
information is objective, that is , facts about the political economic life fo a country
are given, but opinions are not expressed. Art on the other hand os subjective. It
reflects personal emotions anad opinions. For example. Foancisco Goya was a great
Spanish painter and also perhaps the first truly political artist. In his famous
painting, the third of may 1808 he showed soldiers shooting a group of simple
people. His descripton of sodliers and their victims has become a symbol of the enormous power or misuse of this power that a government can have over its people. Over a hundred years later on another continent the powerful paintings of Mexican artists depicted their deep anger and sadness about social problems, In summary through art you can find a personal and amotonal view of hisroty. Thirdly, art can reflect a culture's religious beliefs for hundreds of years. In Europr religious art was almost the only type of art that existed. Churches and other religious buildings were filled with paintings that showed people and stories from the bible, By contrast one of the maim characteristics of art n the middle east was and still is its absence of human and animal images, This reflects the islamic belief that these images are unholy. Thus, on palaces, mosques and other buildings islamic artists have created uniqure decoration of great beauty with images of flowers and geometic forms, for exampla, circles, aquares and triangle. The same is true of other places like Africa and the Pacific islands. art also reflects the religious beliefs of traditional cultures in these palces. As a matter of fact, religion is th epurpose ffor this art and therefore is absolutely essential to it. Traditional art in Africa alnd THE Pacific islands is different form Chirstian art, Chirstian art influences proples feelings towards God, But the goal of art in Afirca and the Pacific islands is to influence spiritual powers. that is gods to enter proples lives. Each tribe or village their have special ceremonies with soongs and dances to make sure that crops, animals and prople are healthy and increase in number. The dances in these ceremonies wear masks head dressers and costumes tht they believe are necessary to influence the god. So these masks and head dressers themselves are a very part of the art. As we have said art depends on culture, different forms of art result from different cultures. Similarly the way people iew art also depens on peoples culture background, This is my fourth point. For most Europeans and Americans art is mainly for decoration . It is something on a museum wall or in a glass case, It makes their homes more attractive, people look at it and admire it:" oh, what a beautiful painting."Besides, ideas are ofter expressed in this art this is a wonderful statue, and admirer would say:"It makes such an anti war statement"But in other places art is not considered to separate from every existence, it has a function, it has a procticla role to play in proples lives. Aperson in a tribal society might look at a mask and say, "Oh, this is a god mask, it wil keep my house safe" In vrief, the way in which jpeople enjou or apreciate art depends on their culture. To conclude my lecture we can say that art is a reflection of various cultures but at the same time art we have to remember taht art also reflects the changes in society that take palce when defferent cultures ingluence one another, As people from different tribal societies move to urban areas, their values and beliefs change accordingly, and the traditional art forms began to lose their function, at the same time urban artists begin to learn a lot from traditional art. For example, african masks and figures had a great influence on Picasso's works, and many American and Canadian artists studied the simplicity of Japanese painting. The result is that as the world gets smaller the art of each culture becomes more international. Ok,this brings us to the end of our lecture. I hope that after today's lecture you will understand better the significnace of a study fo art hisroty. Art enables us to know more about human history,for example, proples views and opinions about cetain historical events, and what is more important about different culture,their religious beliefs, perception of art, etc.
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