Art appreciation deals with arts as a matter of perceiving, understanding, and sympathizing with arts rather than doing arts or working in one of its fields. Art appreciation is a phase that comes before criticism. It is linked with preparing a general understanding of arts in the society and widening people’s horizons and knowledge. Art can be found in the built environment and can be perceived in that of the natural surroundings. One need not to go to specialized art resources, such as art exhibitions, theaters or festivals, since visual impact related to the interaction with the surrounding environment develops a sense of beauty. Art criticism provided from media sources like television and magazines have an important role in the culture of art, thus knowledge. Between the Sensation and Knowledge we appreciate ART.

Modern art is based on a high level of ideology and philosophy. It is a product of a century of western history and universal involvement modernization process. Modern art and modern life style are becoming the culture of the New World in developed countries. Less developed countries live more in a traditional cultural-environment and importing modern technologies, products, know-how, new cultural values and thoughts “the modernization process exhibited in the dramatic socio-cultural and technological changes taking place in most Muslim countries since the beginning of this century…" (Mortada ,1993)

This situation is found in Arabic countries on different levels. Egypt and Iraq are rich with ancient monuments, and the people are used to live with it. In Egypt people are encouraged by tourism to reproduce models of the past to sell them to the tourists. Similar cases can found in other countries like Syria or Tunisia. In all these cases and similar it was looked to art as craft and traditional cultural instruments. Art in Islamic societies seen as functional product, “In the Arab Muslim culture art does not exist in itself, it is integrated into the buildings used by people for a meaningful purpose” (Kendel ,1982)

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, most Islamic countries went through an intellectual and political rebirth, which affected their artistic development and created a cultural resurrection among their intellectuals. One of the main areas that benefited from this renaissance was "Fine Arts". (Ali, 1989)

The modernization process exhibited in the dramatic socio-cultural and technological changes taking place in most Muslim countries since the beginning of this century. (Mortada, 1993)

“Art: Despite the vast distances that separate some of the countries of the Islamic world and their diverse backgrounds, all share many common traits in the development of their contemporary art:

First, the training of all modern Islamic artists, where at home or abroad, is western-oriented and follows western norms, aesthetics and rules. Second, most Islamic artists share a common search for their artistic identity, in a way that will allow them to combine their eastern origins with their western education and way of life. Third, almost all modern Islamic artists, even those in the most progressive countries, have a problem communicating with their own societies." (Ali, 1989)

Hisham Mortada confirms this concept of alienation and frustration in the following statement: "There is no doubt that most modern social and technological concepts implemented in various Islamic countries have been developed in the west and have their roots in non-Islamic principles applied by Muslims. Some of these concepts have failed to satisfy the traditional and contemporary needs of Moslem society and thus have become socially problematic." (Mortada, 1993)

As the Arab cities become more and more westernized the concept of integrating the work of artists into the environment in such a way that helps people to find their way and to make places and things personal and specific to them gets lost. It is necessary to discuss the concept of art and how art is used in the Arab Muslim culture to attract special attention to those elements, which help people to find their way through environment. (Kendel, 1982)

To raise the standards of the Arab City in the light of its noble heritage and to update the quality of the services provided. It is to modernize and develop the fabric of the city itself and to let loose the creative energies of urban planning while taking cognizance of the economic, social cultural and environmental context of the city. Yet we must also retain its Arab character and its Islamic cultural heritage, a task that is indeed a heavy one. (Al-Naiem, 1982)

Islamic architecture has often been misrepresented, lifted out of its social context by an approach whose main concern has been to describe the splendors of the monumental architecture and palaces created for royalty. Parallel to this proud and authoritative architecture exists another everyday architecture built to protect man, his ideas and customs; an architecture disparagingly called “Vernacular”, minor or spontaneous.

Our knowledge of this vernacular architecture and its context remains fragmentary and neglected. Yet, this urban raw material possessing roots that are firmly attached to local reality, has always been the real foundation of urbanization. It is the people’s architecture, built by farmers and fishermen, and not promoters for princes or rich merchants.

The main objective is to promote controversial reactions by underlining the difference between the quiet purity of this minor architecture and the controversial imported out of scale of imported forms and technologies. (Belbacem, 1982)

“Meaning in Architecture” was a set of papers first published to those whose reading is mostly in English. It was edited by Charles Jencks and George Baird, based on the theory of signs. It had previously been available in half a dozen or so articles scattered in various journals, which were later collected in one book. The field, which was a well-established one, was pioneered by certain Italian Theorists in the early 1950s, from Pane (1948) onwards. (Broadbent, 1980). Since those pioneering periods, the field emerged in many directions. Initially it was dominated by the writings of Ferdinand de Saussure, whose main aim in exploring the nature of language (published in English as the “Course in General Linguistics”, 1959), had been to establish a General Theory of Signs. The signs in this case being anything which can‘stand for’ something else – which he called Semiology.

Broadbent drew our attention that the whole field of Meaning in Architecture had been called into question on a number of occasions by certain Anglo-Saxon architects and critics. They see it as far too abstract, but much of this criticism in his opinion, is pure philistinism – evidence of the poverty-stricken intellectual environment, in which the Anglo-Saxon architects had been operating. In this age, whthere is a binding between cultures and arts, the theory of art is successful in finding one universal language for communication between nations. This theory is the way in reaching a style to view the arts through one window.

The author of this article came into contact with this subject during his studies in architecture at Florence University during lectures by Giovanni Klaus Koenig, an Italian from German origins, the author of “Analisi del Linguaggio Architettonico”, 1964. As the author remembers the theories were based on Charles Morris’s book “Sign Language and Behavior”, 1946. Four years later, in 1968, Umberto Eco who was teaching in different faculties of architecture in Italy at the same time (Milano, Florence and Rome), published his book “La Struttura Assente”, which was used by his students as a textbook. It has been more than fifty years since the birth of this theory and it is still developing in different languages and cultures, to the extent that each scholar, most of which are architects, finds in art and architecture a possibility of it being a global language.

Architecture by definition is a built environment. This means it became a new environment realized by human process, which developed through history to express human needs sociologically, spiritually, socially and physically. First it expressed man’s perception of the surrounding and life through his senses. At this stage environment dictated man and became taught by the environment (perception). Second, by exchanging symbols (sounds, signs, images, and imprints) with other human beings, man has created a language by inventing a certain dictionary of meanings agreed upon between a group of human beings. Each sign reflects Referent, Reference and Symbol (Umberto Eco, “Function and Sign”, 1980, p.16). In other words the Object, the Thought and the Symbol. This reflects the stage of man acting upon man, or man acting upon himself, as George Butterworth called it “Language Situated Cognition”. Third, man acting upon his environment, by creating a realistic thought such as painting, sculpture, poetry, or discourse. At this stage man had invented new instruments and objects to be circulated in the environment as Stefano Bianca, 1982, put it, or reflecting the primary function as Eco put it. Gibson stated it as “Meaning of Instrument Machines’ and George Butterworth stated it as “Defining Context”. These first three stages explain the process of creativity and self-expression within the individuals, that is the birth of the artistic work or the birth of the architectural plan. Fourth, once the works of man change the environment by adding his opera, we have a new environment acting on people with forces shared by nature and man. Umberto Eco called it “Secondary Function”, and Gibson called it “Emotional Meaning Value”, which deduct a new sensation and impression. Fifth, once this new environment is born it will impose its characters and styles (Law and Order). Gibson called it “Level of Sign” and Eco called it “Ideology”. It reflects the thought of people upon themselves and reflects the social environment within a certain group which gives them their identity and beliefs. Sixth, once this new environment is established, the environment is fully acted upon by men as society and it becomes a realism (Butterworth), or a “Typology” as Umberto Eco put it, this reflects the culture of the people.

Look to the comparative table of the Theory of Art and Architecture:

The survey aims to explore different kinds of appreciation of art awareness in general and modern art in particular, bearing in mind that modern art is the art of today.

The questionnaire targeted the architects, representing the intellectuals of Jordan, in a profession related directly to arts. In order to justify this approach, other professionals had to be taken into consideration. Architectural students were also considered to compare the results between the architects and their predecessors (students).

It should be noted that the sample chosen for this questionnaire were 261. They were divided into three different groups: Professionals other than architects, who were between 25 to 40 years of age, were 94. Students of the first year in architecture, and those were 88. And the targeted sample of architects, with a number of 79 - a similar age group to those of other professions (25-40).

This sample was chosen so as to reveal the cultural gap between artistically formed (architects), and well-educated personnel and to point out the level of segregation in the awareness of art between the elite Jordanians. The inclusion of the first year students helps to define the artistic formation of school graduated students of the upper middle class. It also helps to compare the development of the artistic sense throughout the early years of a-architect’s formation.

The six fields cover explore the inter-relation between Man/Men and the Environment, as follows:

ENV / MAN = Perception

MAN / MAN = Cognition

MAN / ENV = Creativity & Expression

ENV / MEN = Impression

MEN / MEN = Order – Style - Rules

MEN / ENV = Culture

“Perception is the process of obtaining information from and about one’s surroundings.”

“It is where cognition and reality meet” (Lang, 1987, p.83).

1. The first question was “is art related to nature?”

“Nature is present in the poetry of the poets, and it is certainly present in the poetry of any poetics. It has lent its name (“natural”, “naturalistic”) to everything that appears “real”; it is the source of emotions, moods, and the aura of space and time…”

The answers were that half of the sample sees that art has no relation with nature. Maybe this reflects the loss of contact with nature (more than 60% of the population in Jordan live in urban areas, full of built environment, crowded houses and lack of natural environment, therefore they thought that art is not necessary to be related with nature as such.)

Orhan Hacihasanoglu said that “people select and keep in mind the knowledge obtained from the environment. Environmental characteristics, include not only geographical formations, but also cultural and social characteristics of man-made formations…(socio-cultural factors; historical and folkloric characteristics, population and density, cultural characteristics.)…The original story of a city or a building could not be defined only by its physical structures: People, equipment, actions, music, light and colors, odors may also affect the environmental identity of a system or a place.” (Hacihasanoglu, 1998).

2. “Do you believe that art generates a sense of pleasure?”

“The ecological approach to perception is a radical one. It contradicts the Gestalt concept of isomorphism and the transactional interpretation of the role of experience in perception. Instead of considering the senses as channels of sensation, it regards the senses as perceptual systems.” (Lang, p.90)

Everyone agreed that art is related to pleasure even though they did not agree on the same level and degree.

Perception happens through senses “because it is by way of the senses that the mind has experience of external world.” (Boring, p.4) “Therefore sensation is in the primary source of knowledge.” Christian Norberg-Schulz asserts by saying, “no perception is in reality completely free from an emotional content.” (Norberg-Schulz, 1980)

3. “Do you believe that art is a gift?”

Almost all agreed that art is a gift by nature.

“Any situation in which we have to participate is perceived in relation to our previous experiences.”

“We have different ‘attitude’ (orientation) to the ‘s’ things…the same thing may change according to our attitude…The attitude is often dictated by the situation…We may change the phenomena by changing our attitude.”

“Perception, therefore, is anything but a passive reception of impressions.” (Norberg-Schulz, 1980)

4. “Do you understand plastic art?”

Only 20% stated that they understand. Notice that 27 were hesitant and nearly 20% said “No”, around 60% hesitant and only 20% were sure that they appreciated art.

“Perception constitutes an epistemologically foundational presentation of the way things are in the external world around the perceiver, but which of the ways things are such as might be open to direct perceptual knowledge? My speculation is that this varies, both between people and within people over time, depending upon what we might call their “conceptual-recognitional sophistication.” (Brewer, 1997)

5. “Do you think of art as a value?”

20% agree and the rest reserve.

“Perceptual beliefs about the external world are reasonable, in the required sense, because they can be inferred from foundational introspective by means of a warranted general experience-world linking principle. A person knows how he is right about the way things are around him on the basis of perception, because: 1) The way things appear to him is ‘given’ in experience; and 2) he knows that appearance is reliable indicator that the world is as he believes it to be.” (Brewer, 1997)

We conclude from this that art is misunderstood. Most of them see it as a value by itself; it is a gift by nature, independent from the environment and is of no value.

3.2 Cognition

(Mental Cognition, Symbolization)

“Cognitive Psychology deals with acquisition, organization, and storage of knowledge. It focuses on issues of thinking, learning, remembering, feeling, and mental development. Affect deals with emotion and concerned with likes and dislikes. It involves an understanding of values and attitude formation. An understanding of the process of cognition and affect can make a major contribution to the understanding of environmental aesthetics and the choices people make in the use of the environment.” (Lang, p. 93)

1. Have you ever visited an art museum?

We notice that less than 8 % visit art museums always, while 38 % of the total don’t.

One important point we’ve noticed, that is nearly two thirds of the architectural students have not visited art museums… a serious phenomena. Taking into consideration that the number of museums in Jordan is approximate to 27 museums distributed on all parts of Jordan. (Arabic Association for Sciences and Culture and Education report, Tunis, 1998)

Dr. Carol Malt, a visiting Professor at Fulbright Foundation in Amman – Jordan, gave out another figure. She estimated museums in Jordan as 40 overall. (Al-Rai Daily Newspaper, 13/4/1999)

2. Do you have the intention of visiting art exhibitions?

20 % are not into visiting art exhibitions, while 13 % showed the interest in doing so. (5 % more than those who usually visit museums)

Quoting Hussein Da’aseh, a Jordanian artist and critic: “Jordan has 21 exhibition halls, 95 % of which are located in Amman. With more than 400 art exhibitions in 1997 alone, with 15 thousand contemporary artifacts…” (Al-Rai, 31/12/1997 – p. 31). “… yet total public absence.” (Al-Rai, 7/9/1997 – p.31)

3. Do you follow the news of the art movement?

32 % said they do not follow art news what so ever, while only 5 % showed interest.

“Live” TV, or “Real-Time” TV, is a kind of collective eye, which allows my eyes to look at reality processed for me and for every other person watching at the same time.

Whenever something happens that is internationally newsworthy, a huge thoughtwave made up of millions of people grinding the same information at once and reforms itself every evening and sweeps over the nations from one time zone to another. Even in its standard programming, TV is form of collective imagination, averaging people’s hopes and fears on the basis of regular public – pulse – taking through ratings. (De kerckhove, 1995)

4. Do you read general books related to arts?

Only 4 % of the total read art related books, while the majority of 50 % do not read such books, (here we notice that only 21 % of the architects are inclined to read about art).

“The architect cannot limit himself to seeing buildings by means of their visible enveloping plans. He sees the invisible, his vision anticipates the hypotheses that he will be able to make on the interior organization, thickness, structure, space and all that follows.” (Von Meioses - p. 27)

5. Are you interested in specialized books in art?

13 % of the sample are interested in specialized books about art.

We must always start by considering a work of architecture as a work of art and the architect as the artist. Buildings and builders are something else, something respectable, but something else.” (Ponti, 1972)

1. Do you think of art as a miracle?

Considering miracle as talent, capability, perfection and accuracy, we found that 55 % consider art as a miracle and cannot be performed by all people one way or another.

Thinking calls for images, and images contain thought. (Arnheim, p.254)

To treat art as a form of visual thinking may seem undoubtedly one-sided. Art fulfills other functions, which are often considered primary. It creates beauty, perfection, harmony, and order. It gives vent to pleasure or discontent. (Arnheim, p.254)

Beauty, perfection, harmony, orders do serve to give a sense of well being by presenting a world congenial to human needs: but they are also indispensable conditions for making a cognitive statement, clear, coherent, comprehensible. (Arnheim, p.254)

2. Do you encourage people to do art?

Only 12 % do not agree upon the encouragement of people to do art.

“The real artists are not dreamers, as so many believe, they are terrible realists. They do not transpose reality into a dream, but a dream into reality – written drawn, musical, architectural reality. (Ponti, 1972)

3. Do you think that ungifted people can learn art?

Only one fourth agree that ungifted people can learn art.

“We have already argued for supremacy of drawing over narrative in our discussion of the channel of transformation. Yet at this stage we do not deny the pleasure as well as the benefit that can be derived if one feels at home with the narrative or the writing of scenarios. We should be open, contemplate them, and always encourage dynamic interpretations of such scenarios in drawing. The best scenario is to do the narratives first and then project them into drawing. (Antoniades, 1990)

4. Do you think that children should be introduced to art?

Less than 9 % hesitated to agree upon the introduction of children to art, while 72 % agreed affirmatively.

Representation, it may be said, is as old as civilization. It may even be possible to postulate that civilization is synonymous with man’s ability to create icons, the letters of the alphabet, or scribbling on cave walls. (Ajlouni, p. 13)

5. Can you communicate with others by art?

We noticed that the architectural students develop the talent of communicating through Art (1/3), and unlike other professions where 17 % communicate through art, while 2/3 the architects do so already (62 %)

“The most published architects in the last fifteen years have been highly skilled in graphic abilities, some being accomplished painters and graphic artists, whose most memorable work is not their buildings but their splendid presentations. Michael Graves, Zoe Zenghelis, Zaha Hadid, the models of Frank O. Gehry, and the bright red follies of Parc de la Villette in Paris by Bernard Tschumi are familiar to every architecture student.” (Minah, 1996)

It is quite true that our at a point of no decision in the arts and sciences, more or less simultaneously at this “moment” is in itself another illusion… (Lippold, 1972)

1. Do you enjoy art as a hobby?

On average 10 % of architects & students of architecture, don’t use art as a hobby at all, in comparison to those of other professions with only 16 % who share the same view.

We noticed that the more education people get the more they use art, in their daily life.

In this way, the scientist, the artist, and the prophet is one, for it is the general acceptance of a particular illusion which motivates and unifies mankind at any given time. To abandon this illusion to chaos or to embrace previous illusions is to die. Creativity, like life and like love, depends on a man’s ability to accept an illusion, to be aware of it, and to sustain it. Only in this way can he find a structure for his life and for his work. Illusion is structure. (Lippold, 1972)

2. Does art generate a sense of beauty?

Almost all agreed on the relation of art to a common sense of beauty. As expected no architects were against this believe, but we noticed that more architectural students (6.7 %) disagreed than those of other professions (4.3 %).

There have been indeed architects who have acted as artists of the “Twentieth Century”, denying the value of acceptability by their audience, caring less for utilitarian needs, and there have been many whose sole concern has been the achievement of “beauty” in its abstract formal dimensions, in the “stylistic” and “historical” sense. The period of 1970’s to 1980’s was dominated by such attitudes. (Antoniades, p.289)

3. Do you think art should be monitored?

Although the general approach of the sample was towards monitoring art (62.6 + 19.9 %), surprisingly architectural students and architects, both had a majority with that preference (46.6, 43.0 % respectively, vs. 26.6 % for those of other professions).

No one will deny the profound inter-relation of artist and community. The artist depends on the community – takes his tone, his tempo, and his intensity from the society of which he is a member, but the individual character of the artist’s work depends on more than these. It depends on the definite will-to-form which is the reflection of the artists’ personality, and there is no significant art without this act of creative will. (Read, p.196)

There was an obvious conflict in this matter. Both architects and students of architecture had an equal tendency between believers in the liberty of art to those unbelievers. Unlike other professionals whom we find more belief in the liberty of art.

The Liberal Arts, so named because they were only ones worthy of being practiced by a free man, dealt with language and mathematics. Specifically, grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric were the arts of words. Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music were based on mathematics. Paintings and sculpture were among the mechanical arts, which required labor and craftsmanship. (Arnheim, 1969)

The majority agreed upon the freedom of the artist. Still among the disbelivers in that matter, architectural students were the most (11.3 %).

“What we really expect in a work of art is a certain personal element – we expect the artist to have, if not a distinguished mind, at least a distinguished sensibility. We expect him to reveal something to us that is original – a unique and private vision of the world. (Read, 1967)

3.5 Semantical Forms

(Order, Style, Rules)

One could point to comments in popular treatises on aesthetics, or to introductory books on music or architecture, for assurances that both arts share similarities, such as tone, beat, proportion, and rhythm. (Antoniades, p.265)

People mostly agree that art has a role to play in the social life of a community, still more than 40 % overall, have their doubts. As noticed from the results, architectural students are the ones with such disbelieves.

Here at least 80 % agree, most of which are architects and students of architecture, where as other professionals hesitate.

One of the major characteristics of art in the Twentieth Century is that it has challenged the concept of beauty, of the visual and formal appeal & a work of art on sight, while it has accepted new license for the performance, conduct, and role of artists in society. Through a process of cause and effect, Twentieth Century civilization has created its own concepts of art from within, artists are now accepted as creators and social critics, and their relationship to their general audience is totally different from that of earlier times. (Antoniades,1990)

The majority agreed that art has an impact on the living environment, especially professionals other than architects (51.1 % answered mostly)… An unexpected result was the 31.6 % of the architects that doubted that question, answering Sometimes.

The word “Modern” as applied to works of art has acquired shades of meaning not entirely covered by the dictionary definition, “of present or recent times”. It is sometimes used, for instance, irrespective of date, to show appreciation of qualities in form and color which still seem “living” and near to us in feeling, even if produced long ago… Modern art has come to signify a special development with a distinct character. It has branched out in various ways, but it shows, broadly speaking, two main tendencies; the effort of artists to find fresh resource in their medium as a means of expression, and also to create works of art in some way related tom the nature and changing conditions of modern life. (Gaunt, 1964)

A general agreement on the role of art in the spreading of culture, and here we find that architects believe that they can benefit from art in doing so.

Landscapes, towns and buildings are part of each person’s daily visual experience; they are not reserved for specialists. Of course the impressions of the public remain most often intuitive and hazy. Its view are, however, governed by a combination of visual laws, acquired cultural values that have been imposed or accepted, by the memory of one’s own experience and by particular objectives that one is pursuing at the moment of confrontation with the environment in question. (Von Meiss, 1992)

All agree that art can be used in the conservation of the environment.

Architecture that does nothing but function is not yet beautiful and is not even thoroughly functional. It functions entirely only if it is beautiful, then it functions forever. It must function at the artistic level; it functions even when it no longer functions practically. It functions ultimately as a ruin. It functions poetically. It functions in history,in culture, in magic. This is the ultimate function of architecture – to surpass the function that originated it, to function at the level of art. (Ponti, 1972)

Culture is something which is not just received but which is also revised and re-created by children. It remains a source of meaningful representations of objects and actions, representations which are socio – historical because they emerge from the historical experience of a social group.

1. Is the artist well respected in our local society?

Most people are convinced that artists are not well respected in our local society. This point of view is shared dominantly by architects.

“One forgets that in real life, the cultural model is more important to people than the architectural envelope.” (Belkacem, 1982)

2. Is art restricted to the rich?

The answer is a big ‘NO’ where we have a total agreement on the wide spreading of art (68.6 %), although some local elite artists think oppositely.

“Art and artists are alienated from the public. In general, art is regarded as no more than a hobby for the idle to practice and a luxury for the rich to enjoy.” (Ali, 1989)

Motivation is the guiding force behind behavior. Behavior is directed toward the satisfaction of needs. (Lang, 1987)

3. Do you believe that art suits girls more than boys?

While considering the most people who answered ‘Always’ we find architects have the highest percentage (6.8 %)… The most undecided were those from other professions (25.5 %). Taking into consideration that the general agreement was art is not related to gender.

Much of our behavior is culture-bound. It depends on how we have been socialized to like and dislike patterns of the environment and the successes that we have had in the past in dealing with them. (Lang, 1987)

4. Is art against morals?

Professionals other than architects had the highest percentage of ‘No’ (48.9 %) as an answer to this question.

In the late nineteenth century social scientists noted that as societies modernized and advanced institutionally, the notes individuals played became increasingly specialized and differentiated. They recognized modernization as a centrifugal force that weakened local ties and rendered beliefs and behaviors increasingly dissimilar. Paradoxically, modernization created new centripetal tendencies as well, attended by an expanding web of functional interdependencies that enhanced social solidarity. Modernizing societies remained intact, but for different reasons”. (Person,1993)

5. Is art against believes?

While students of architecture think that art does not conflict with the believes (39.8 %), architects on the contrary propose that it does ‘sometimes’ (41.7 %)

A reliabilist account is one on which true perceptual beliefs constitute knowledge just in case the appropriate relations between world, experience, and belief are reliable…

Satisfaction of the reliability condition would be external to the subject’s mind in the following sense. The need have no recognition whatsoever that the condition obtains: no idea whether, how, or why he is right in believing what he does. (Brewer, 1997)

Being capable of seeing what few others perceive straight away. The architect bears a great responsibility. We can build what others are hardly capable of seeing… We can speculate on the fact that one-day the public will discover at least part of our intentions by incorporating them in its memory. His “didactic” role can help others to perceive and enjoy the built environment with greater subtlety. (Von Meiss, 1992)

5. Regarding Perception:

The conclusion of perception reminds us of the same conclusion of Jon Lang when he said; “the coexistence of contradictory theories of perception shows the conjectural nature of our understanding of the perceptual process. There are, however, a number of matters on which there is agreement. Perception is multimodal; movement plays a major part in environmental perception.” (Lang, 1987)

6. Regarding Cognition of Art,

We find general ignorance and illiteracy, a dangerous phenomena, because it’s related to thought as well as Imagination (which Jon Lang called Schemata).

Schemata provides us with algorithms for perceiving, learning, and behaving. We do not know what a schema is like in biological terms. We assume its existence to explain much about learning and behavior. Schemata can be considered to act like templates for action. Extensive schemata have lesser ones buried in them. This explains how we can act, make plans about where we are going, and appreciate the world around us all at the same time. (Lang, 1987)

The images that people have of the environment around them are a type of schemata. These images can be iconic images (cognitive maps) as discussed by Kevin Lynch in The Image of The City (1960), or associational images (more properly, symbolic meanings), as discussed by Anselm Strauss in Images of The American City (1961). (Lang, p. 94)

As we know Cognition links Perception with Creativity. It is not an educational problem, it is more behavioral and it respects the culture of the people. This phenomena might have been influenced by the dominance of media of modern times, such as television, internet, and so on, that people have no interest in reading books anymore.

“When asked what the specific books related to art that he currently reads, a local architect said:

Right now I do not read but write, speculate, research and paint. Reading has many kinds: There is the reading of nature, ruins and trees; the reading of personalities, eyes and movements; and the reading of events, history and the present.

The reading of the soul, understanding it and analyzing ones personality is my favorite kind of reading, for in it there is self-criticism” (Al-Rai, 27/12/1998)

7. Regarding Architectural Expression:

The majority of people lost interest in manipulating art & obtaining art appreciation at their old age, referring to art as a talent that grows with people or can be taught to children at an early age.

Some have argued in the past that creativity cannot be adequately defined because all the aspects of creativity are in fact more special than it is itself. This notion had been stated by Whitehead, and it may have been one of the reasons why architects in the past have argued that creativity cannot be taught. (Antoniadis, 1990)

8. Regarding Impression

As seen from the results of Q.3 & 4 & 5, we notice architects and architectural students do not believe in the liberty of art and the freedom of the artist, and think it should be monitored and controlled. An unexplained phenomenon.

By creativity we should understand for preliminary introductory purposes all the processes, the state of mind and the “agony”, perhaps the uneasiness and turmoil, the state of total emergence and the birth of unstaring mechanisms, through which the creator has to go during the stage of intellectual and design conception. (Antoniadis, 1990)

9. Regarding Semantical Forms

The creation of “new traditional environments” is a very complex process. These new environments are places of cultural encounter and dissonance where past meets present, ideas germinate, ferment, and possibly develop into new ways of dealing with social and environmental problems. (Mazumder, 1991)

10. Regarding Culture

The symbolic meaning of the built environment must be perceived within the broad set of values about people and the universe that constitutes a culture. (Lang, 1987)

The modern artistic movement now lives a state of social siege. The society, which has been away from exhibition halls, considers art is for those who have been educated with western culture. The reason for this is that many artists offer artistic works that do not suit the majority of tastes, for many are still infatuated by traditional crafts that express the art of the society, which manages to combine usage and beauty. A situation that has been avoided by the western schools by differentiating between Plastic Art and Practical Art.

One of the main aims of the artist is to search for beauty, the beauty that cannot be identified but felt. The artist affects and is affected fromreality, and society is the main part of reality. Therefore, for the artist to disassociate himself from his surroundings needs a deep study of tradition for him to make a developed civilized step.

Dr. Ali F. El-Ghul

Department of Architecture

University of Jordan