ART (according to Beardsley, 1981)

• nature is the art of who?

  GOD
• Nature


  The art of God, comprising plants, animals, lands, and other features and produce of the earth
• Nature has been used by many artists as one of their sources of inspiration
• The elements of art are all seen in nature
• Elements of art seen in nature

  • Growing trees show vertical lines
  • Mountains, cliffs and hills reflect curves, triangular and zigzag lines
  • Lush vegetation shows the different tints and shades of green
  • Blooming flowers with bright colors
  • Vast space of deserts, oceans and skies appear with yellowish brown and blue colors
• Textures seen in nature

  • Bumpy, rocky, protruding, rolling, sparse and dense places
• Daytime and nighttime provide the value of sharpness between lightness and darkness of colors
• Nature


  Not art but its source, art is made by man no matter how close it is to nature
• Before the mass production of colors by industries, artists, and weavers in the past extracted juices from plants as colors used primarily to dye threads in weaving for cloth
• Colors extracted from plants by Sumbanese women

  • Tobacco juices and other plants
• The Sumbanese weavers in Indonesia featured images of different animals in the weaving of cloth
• Designs featured by Yakan weavers in the Philippines

  • Pench kenna-kenna (fish-like design)
  • Pench sawe-sawe (folial design)
  • Penneh kule-kule (turtle-like design)
• Nature is associated with animism and other cultural beliefs and traditions shown in the staging of rituals and festivities
• Like the inner mystical or psycho-spiritual dimensions of Islam, Sufism emphasizes introspection and spiritual closeness with Allah
• Muslim artists do not emphasize animals and plants in art
• Islamic art


  Emphasized geometric figures emanating from the ultimate reality Allah to human realities, as one of the most powerful forms of sacred art
• The art of weaving in the Philippines observes its utilitarian purpose by using natural materials in the environment like leaves, vines, and bamboo strips, which are durable enough to contain the yields of the farm
• Weaving in the Philippines

  • Cebuanos weave bakat, a large basket-like container of braid bamboo strips with a hexagram tessellation- a motif found in the eyes of the basket in hexagonal patterns that form like a honeycomb
• The design of the bakat reflects the animistic belief of Handurawism, a ritual supplication of intimacy to Laon, a "Supreme Visayan Deity-The Ruler of time" in harmony with the kalikupan or nature
• Weaving patterns in the Philippines

  • Puso (hanging rice pouches) into six geometrical designs using tender leaves of palm leaves braided into kinasing (heart-like shape), binaki (froglike shape), manan-aw (caseading-like phalaenopsis shape)