Humanities through the Arts
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Humanities through the Arts Details
Humanities Through the Arts, ninth edition, continues to explore the humanities with an emphasis upon the arts as an expression of cultural and personal values, examining the relationship of the humanities to important values, objects and events. The book is arranged topically by art form from painting, sculpture, photography, and architecture to literature, music, theater, film, and dance. Four major pedagogical boxed features enhance student understanding of the genres and of individual works within the genres: Perception Key boxes, Conception Key boxes, Experiencing boxes, and new Focus On boxes. Intended for introductory-level, interdisciplinary courses offered across the curriculum in the Humanities, Philosophy, Art, English, Music, and Education departments, this beautifully illustrated text helps students learn how to actively engage a work of art.
Reviews
I am having to use this for my HUM 101 class. I will start with the positives. The chapters actually are quick reading compared to other textbooks I have read and there are plenty of pictures in there that the book analyzes. I was also glad to rent this through Amazon because I only had to pay $40, while my campus bookstore was selling it for $100. Now here are the negatives, part of it may not affect you like it did me. I am not artistic, I am very concrete, so I am bad at analyzing art. When the book explains the details of paintings or architecture and states what they mean, I have no idea how they interpreted it that way. In fact, it is hard for me to understand the importance of what they point out. I am the type of person who will look at paintings quickly in a museum. The other negative is that the book will mention other details about a piece of art but not show it visually. My humanities professor has complained that they don't show the interior of architecture, which is just as important as the exterior. But overall, this textbook serves its purpose for a humanities class and still helps to a certain point. Probably my favorite part of the textbook is that they acknowledge that you may not agree with them on some observations and that interpretation of art is not black and white.
