APPLIED ARTS

Applied arts are those that incorporate

the ideals of composition and creativity
into everyday objects, such as a mug, a
magazine, or a decorative park bench.
They emerge as an expression that
goes against the position of Fine Arts,
which serve as an intellectual stimulus
or academic sensitivity for the viewer.
Currently, engraving and crafts are at an
intermediate point, between applied and plastic arts. This was not always the case,
because the applied arts were considered an inferior activity and also classified
within the plastic arts , which adopted an initial focus on the multiple and/or useful
production of crafts and engraving . However, the concept would partially change
in the 18th century with the Industrial Revolution , when technique was transformed
into technology ; making it share a territory close to engineering .
Some examples of the areas encompassed by the applied arts are industrial
design , interior design , fashion design , graphic design and advertising ; In the
same way, although in a more abstract or broader context, there are also
photography and architecture .
Thanks to the emergence of franchises , many objects of applied art can be
collectible; such as toys, stickers, jewelry, cars, electric guitars, various movie
posters or old advertisements, etc.
Some terms that are generally used as equivalents to applied arts are industrial
arts and functional arts . They are usually identified with the word design, which
is directly associated with the development of modern industrial products.
On the other hand, there are expressions that are misused, which lead to an
erroneous meaning or context, such as the case of artistic crafts and the minor
arts . Therefore, this last expression should not be confused with minor art (a
metric form in poetry), this implies differentiation with the major arts (painting,
sculpture and architecture), and is typical of the traditional arts.
Another term that has or has historically had confluent uses with applied arts is
decorative or sumptuary arts .
The concepts of Functional Art and Utilitarian Art can be understood as a specific
style within the fine arts or as equivalent to those of useful arts or utilitarian arts ,
whether or not identified with applied arts.
The concept of applied arts should not be confused with the concept of applied
sciences .

CONTEMPORARY ARTS
Contemporary art , in the literal sense, is what
has been produced in our time: current art .
However, the fact that the concept was
historically fixed at a certain moment, the
passage of time makes it move further and further
into the past of the contemporary viewer .
The concept of contemporaneity applied to art
can be located chronologically with different criteria:

 With an extensive criterion, it includes art from the entire Contemporary Age
(beginning at the end of the 18th century )
 With successively increasingly narrower criteria, it includes only:

 the art of the 20th century (characterized by the artistic avant-garde );

 the art of today's world , which at the time it was defined as a
historiographic term was understood to be that after the Second World
War -1945- (most art museums usually call collections from that period
"contemporary art"). );
 the art that emerged in the immediate history of the closest present,
taking as historical milestones, for example, the events of May 1968 in
France , the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) or the attack on the Twin
Towers in New York (2001 ).
For greater confusion, the concept of Modern Art is not applied to the Art of the
Modern Age ( 15th to 18th centuries), but to our contemporary art, because it is
applied not with a chronological criterion ( periodization ), but with an aesthetic
one , defined by its rupture. with academicism and for its adaptation to renewed
and provocative theories of art ( dehumanized art , particulate art). uro , death
of art , crisis of the artistic object , independent art , etc. See also study of art
history ).
 The same occurs with the concepts of modern and contemporary applied to
each of the fine arts (especially the visual arts : modern architecture ,
contemporary architecture, modern painting and contemporary painting ,
modern sculpture or contemporary sculpture ); or with the less used concept of
postmodern art (since the 1970s ).
For the other fine arts , this adjective is not used in a similar way: modern
literature and contemporary literature denote very different meanings. Much
more clearly, the concept of modern music is usually reserved for modern
popular music (from the mass-market music industry ); while the one for
contemporary music is made for the one for academic music of the 20th
century . The expression modern dance is usually used interchangeably with
contemporary dance , and is chronologically and stylistically opposed to other
dance genres, such as classical dance ( ballet ) and Spanish dance , with
which it shares the status of cultured or admissible dance in cultural institutions
(along with opera or classical music concerts); but the expression " modern
dance " (especially in the plural: " modern dances ") is usually used for types of
dance with less identification with such institutions ( ballroom dancing and
youth disco dancing). The emergence of cinema ( seventh art ) at the end of
the 19th century, previously of photography , and later of comics , makes the
classification of modern or contemporary to any part of its productions of little
use.
It is very common for publications and institutions to assimilate both
denominations, encompassing them in the joint concept of modern and
contemporary art .
WESTERN ART MOVEMENT
The history of Western art is largely reduced to the
history of European art since the Middle Ages and classical
Greco-Roman art; as well as at the beginning of art along
with history in the civilizations that are considered its
predecessors ( Egypt and the Near East ). The artistic
manifestations of previous times on the European
continent and the Mediterranean basin are very diverse,
because although some are very distant in time and
present a great cultural distance ( prehistoric art ); others
do not ( megalithism , protohistoric art).

The cause of this limitation has to do, logically, with the fact that the study of art
history was born as a discipline in the Italian Renaissance ; and with that Europe
(especially France and England , and especially the German-speaking countries)
continued to host the main centers of art historians and scholars until the middle of
the 20th century , at which time, after the Second World War , it also The United
States became a center of artistic production and of art criticism and history of the
first order. Less attention has been received by the artistic productions of other
civilizations, and even those of peripheral areas of Western civilization itself (such
as colonial America ), regardless of the consideration that may be made of their
importance compared to that of the central areas of Western civilization. . Such an
orientation is often accused of Eurocentrism by supporters of a global perspective.
Although the concept of Art is modern, it is perfectly usable in the architecture,
sculpture, painting and jewelry of antiquity, many of its creations being authentic
works of art and not simple utilitarian works of craftsmanship. The formulation of
Western classical aesthetics begins with Greek and Roman cultures.
In Antiquity, art was associated with the formal needs of religious rituals: most of
the monuments and elements with undeniable artistic value that have endured (
painting , sculpture , architecture ), were intended to symbolize royal power and
myths of the heavenly world. This view of art is found especially among the
Egyptians and Babylonians .

ART OF ANCIENT EGYPT

In Egyptian art there is an exaltation of eternal life,
manifesting in the early ages the idea that the pharaoh
continued to live after his physical death. In Egypt, since
the first dynasties, the pharaoh was conceived as
responsible for Maat , Order and Universal Justice, and
this will be reflected in art.
Egyptian architecture, with a strong symbolic character
and great monumentality, used carved stone for the first
time, in large blocks, with a lintel construction system and solid columns. The most
characteristic constructions of religious Egyptian architecture are the "pyramid
complexes", temples and tombs (mastabas and hypogeums). Few remains of civil
architecture have been preserved, as they were built with adobe . (see: Ancient
Egyptian Architecture )
During the fourth dynasty, sculpture achieved absolute mastery of the technique in
elegant and realistic representations of scribes and statues of pharaohs of majestic
bearing. The "law of frontality" predominated. (see: Ancient Egyptian Sculpture )
The mural representations, in bas-relief or paintings, represent with symbolic and
hierarchical criteria mythological images, of royalty and, later, scenes of daily life
(in tombs of nobles). The " profile canon " predominated. (see: Ancient Egyptian
Painting )

GUATEMALAN POPULAR CULTURE

We understand folklore or traditional popular culture to be all those manifestations
that develop within the popular classes of a country, with their own characteristics,
and that express the conception of the world and life of these social groups. The
most outstanding elements of a country's culture take refuge in them. Furthermore,
traditional popular culture contains within itself a whole range of aspects that all
lead to the establishment of the general lines of the cultural identity of a country;
Hence the study of folklore is relevant and has to be serious and scientific.
Likewise, its study allows us to establish not only the key elements of the cultural
identity of a nation, but also to find and highlight the economic and social laws that
govern each phenomenon of popular culture.

Based on its evaluation, the necessary policies for the preservation of the popular
cultural heritage of a country can be objectively drawn up.

In the case of Guatemala, the folklore heritage is extraordinarily rich, since it is

nourished by different formative sources, which, like deep rivers, sink in time in
various directions. That is to say, the folklore of Guatemala, taking into account its
sources of origin, can be divided into three categories: the first includes all the
manifestations of pre-Hispanic indigenous roots; in the second all those that arose

during the Spanish denomination and that therefore can They can be called
colonial; and in the third, those that, without being indigenous or colonial, took root
thanks to the penetration of foreign influences. Therefore, and in summary, the
sources of Guatemalan folklore are: indigenous (pre-Hispanic and colonial),
European and African. The specific elements of these sources - costumes,
ceramics, music, literature, among others - have been folklorized thanks to to the
different historical processes that our country has followed, reaching the present
day as a dialectical synthesis of elements of these three roots in which the
historical process has left a mestizo imprint, in which the cultural elements have
been re-elaborated and re-interpreted by the social groups to which it belongs,
and, likewise, the adoption of new functions, has allowed these cultural elements to
be charged with new meaning, thus resulting in the entire amalgamation of
Guatemalan popular traditions that we know today. This means that we cannot
speak of a purely indigenous root in our popular culture, nor of European and
African folkloric elements considered in isolation, but rather they must be seen as a
dialectical synthesis in which many cultural elements from these sources were
fused, and in which one or another factor predominates, according to the historical
process that has governed it.