Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and exercises for Arts and Humanities for Baccalaureate

Sculpture

Key Features

• Stone (royal) and wood (private) materials
• Predominantly free-standing or almost in the round
• Frontal view design
• Statism (lack of movement)
• Arms arranged along the body with fists (block statues)
• Expressionless faces, distant gaze (hieratic)
• Idealized, proportionate representation

Painting

Mural Painting

• Mixed technique (cool and tempera)
• Decorated tomb interiors (e.g., Valley of the Kings)
• Iconography: afterlife and real-life scenes
• Mythology, royal life, daily life themes
• Flat, intense colors (preference for warm tones)
• Precise drawing, gridded surfaces
• Combined perspective and profile view
• Juxtaposed figures, sense of physicality
• Lack of three-dimensional perspective
• Scenes structured by logs (bands with rows of characters)

Marx's Historical Materialism: Core Principles

One of the strongest features of Marx's philosophy is called historical materialism. This is understood as a theory of social evolution, i.e., a theory of historical development. This theory has five key findings:

1. The Material Basis of Human History

   The history of human beings is the history of the material conditions that allow them to build their lives. Human beings are natural and part of nature. However, humans also produce their livelihoods, build their way of life, feed themselves, build their homes, and use tools that transform nature; they therefore produce their material life. This material life is what Marx called the economic process of production and exchange. Historical materialism maintains

The Family of Carlos IV (Goya)

1800-1801

Technique: Oil on canvas

Visual Elements: Goya's brushwork is loose and vigorous, with drawing achieving little importance. The appearance of color in the dresses is meticulously worked and is based on whites and golds that harmonize with reds and blues. The painter illuminated the right side of the painting and left the other side invaded by a gloom from which faces look towards the observer.

Composition: The Family of Carlos IV is a collective portrait that shares some characteristics with Neoclassical portraiture. However, it cannot be reduced to this style because it waives the careful working drawing and thoroughly studies the color and the psychological center of the figures. The King and his wife...

Narrative Speech: Key Elements

Narrative speech is a form of discourse in which an issuer (narrator) tells about events related to characters, which occur in a temporal process and a determined space.

Linguistic Features

• Abundance of verbal forms.
• Abundance of temporal subordinate clauses.
• In connection with the syntax, we must bear in mind that the more compound sentences and complex syntactic constructions there are, the more it will slow down the narrative. The author plays with this to get the narrative effect that they are pursuing.

Specifications

Point of View

The point of view is the combination of the grammatical person from which the story is told and the attitude of the narrator with respect to the facts.

The main variations that can be found...

The Lyric Genre: Expression of Moods

The lyric genre focuses on imitating moods and expressing intense personal feelings.

Key Characteristics of Lyrical Texts

• Provides highly subjective speech, resulting from internalization, where the poetic voice plays the predominant role.
• Does not develop a story; its content is the expression of feelings, emotions, and ideas through a fictional poetic voice, which should not be identified with the author.
• Usually focuses on a single aspect and is generally short, allowing for the accumulation of expressive resources.
• Typically presented in verse, though works of lyrical prose, known as prose poetry, also exist.

The Poetic Self and Recipient ('You')

The poetic self may be expressed through explicit personal pronouns...

The Splendor and Cultural Siglo de Oro

Spanish society remained dominated by the aristocratic and religious values of the collective mentality of the previous century. These values also permeated the culture. While science and thought experienced a decline, literature and art flourished, marking the Golden Age for its magnificent creations.

Amidst a largely illiterate population, access to culture remained difficult, accessible only to a minority of affluent individuals. The Index of Forbidden Books filtered any argument that contravened the principles of Catholicism.

Literature and Art in the Golden Age

In the field of literature and art, Spain experienced a period of unprecedented boom, influenced by a great love of the theater. The century began...

Scientific and technical texts

Scientific and technical texts:

Scientist: Texts about natural and physical phenomena that study the principles and laws of nature.

Technicians: Subjects involving practical applications of these principles and aiming to report on the progress of science.

Language features

1. Clarity: Well-constructed sentences that avoid ambiguity and misunderstandings.
2. Accuracy: Absence of subjectivity and the use of monosemic terms where possible.
3. Objectivity: Content should be presented in a manner compatible with objective discussion.
4. Use of nonlinguistic codes: Formulas and symbols alternate with ordinary verbal language.
5. Used forms of discourse: Exposition and argumentation.
6. Cryptic vocabulary: Specialized vocabulary whose domain is

Symbolic Capacity

Aristotle defined the human being as a rational animal. Studying their origins, we know that man was and is an animal that has followed an evolutionary process. According to the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer, the definition of "rational animal" is valid but insufficient. The human animal has emotions, feelings, poetic imagination, and all this is able to be expressed symbolically. To that effect, human beings have a characteristic that perhaps most differentiates us from the rest of the animals: symbolic capacity. Man is the only animal capable of building symbolic forms such as language, art, and religion. These shapes give meaning and symbolic significance to the world in which he lives.

What is a Symbol?

• It is a substitute

Narrative Text: Key Elements

Narrative: The story is the relationship, real or imaginary, of events that occur to characters in a specific place and time. In every narrative, there is a story (the set of events that have occurred in reality) and an account or plot (the expression of these facts, presented as history).

Elements of Narration

• Narrator and Author: The author is the real writer who writes the story. The narrator is the one who tells the story. From the narrator's point of view, this can be in:
  • Third person: The narrator recounts what happens to others and can be omniscient (knows everything) or absent (only recounts what is visible).
  • First person: The narrator recounts what happened to them (protagonist narrator) or what they saw or

Phidias and Classical Greek Sculpture

Phidias represents the peak of Greek classicism. His figures are ideal prototypes, full of serenity, balance, and beauty. His works are characterized by the serene expression on the faces and the flexibility and transparency of the garments. He is the artist who best represented the gods. Phidias cultivated both free-standing sculpture and relief, reaching a very high degree of perfection.

Decoration of the Parthenon

Phidias was entrusted with the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon, primarily situated in the pediments, friezes, and metopes. He devised and supervised the work. Some characteristics of Phidias' style are:

• The clothing, using the technique of "wet drapery," allows the anatomy to be appreciated,