This unit guide will explore how beauty and art🎨 influences quality of life and values in Spanish-speaking communities.

What type of woman or man do you consider exotic? Every day, we are bombarded with messages, both overt and subtle, about beauty ideals. These messages influence us daily on what to buy and what to do to reach our own version of ideal beauty. The same thing goes for aesthetics—the philosophical outlook on good taste and appreciation of beauty.

Historically, Latin media representation has generally tended to be Eurocentric due to the long history of colonization dominating the local cultures. Oppression was a driving force of controlling people of color and indigenous populations which invaded the beauty industry just like other social and political spheres. The whitewashing of beauty ads and art was common because the ruling class who could afford to create the artistic items wanted items that reflected their own look. 

Whitewashing reached as high as the rulers in some countries. Rafael Trujillo, the former dictator of La República Dominicana🇩🇴 created an elaborate plan to cleanse dark-skinned people from the country in order to "lighten" the population and make space for refugees from the Holocaust and the Spanish Civil War🇪🇸.

As history progressed, a new aspect of traditional Latin beauty standards emerged in regards to body size and shape; Latina women were supposed to be curvaceous, tan-skinned, and have dark hair. A new sexualized, exotic ideal became desirable. Actresses like Jennifer Lopez, Sofía Vergara, and Eva Mendes epitomized the definition of Latina beauty.

The following video shows a progression of western feminine beauty standards over the last century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4SqeNG_QAw

There is a strong focus on beauty in the Latin community. As globalization increases, US media📰 representation and beauty standards influence Latin standards and Latina women have felt pressured to either conform to US standards or over emphasize the Latina stereotype. 

As a result of a strong focus on beauty, there is a high occurrence of plastic surgery. Many women receive liposuction, breast augmentation, and botox💉 to change their bodies to fit the standard they most desire. Sometimes, that desire stretches to competing in beauty competitions. According to Popsugar.com, "Three of the four countries that have the most winners in the main beauty pageants like Miss World, Miss Earth, and Miss Universe are from Latin America: Venezuela🇻🇪, Puerto Rico🇵🇷, and Brazil🇧🇷."

The following video shows recent beauty standards in different countries around the world.

As mentioned previously, aesthetics is the philosophical outlook on good taste and appreciation of beauty. People are not the only things that can be beautiful. Have you ever sat outside and looked at the sun set🌅 or rise and loved what you saw? You are appreciating the aesthetic of what you were seeing.

Nature🌳🍁 is a large source of appreciation for aesthetics. Many paintings are based on landscapes or floral arrangements to further appreciate nature. Below is El Greco's 

This painting was painted🎨 between 1596 and 1600 and shows geographically accurate locations of buildings in the town of Toledo, España🇪🇸 along with the lush green countryside outside of town.

Architecture is another place where aesthetics can be appreciated. Buildings🏛️⛪🏢 can be considered beautiful too. Throughout history, cathedrals⛪ and churches⛪ housed irreplaceable pieces of art within their safekeeping, but many forget to notice the outer faces or 

 elaborately decorated with saints or other religious symbology✝️. See the Passion façade of La Sagrada Família in Barcelona, España🇪🇸 below.

Other buildings that are commonly created to have an appealing aesthetic are art museums🎨🏢. Architects designed many art museums🎨🏢 to become a work of art themselves in order to bring a positive aesthetic to the neighborhood or draw in the eyes of passersby. Below is the Guggenheim Art Museum in Bilbao, España🇪🇸. It is a modern building to reflect the contemporary art displayed within.

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Unit 1: Families in Different Societies

Unit 2: The Influence of Language and Culture on Identity

Unit 3: Influences of Beauty and Art

Unit 4: How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives

Unit 5: Factors That Impact the Quality of Life

Unit 6: Environmental, Political, and Societal Challenges

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First Unit

Definition of Beauty in Daily Life

Art has long been used to challenge the mind🧠🤔 of the viewer. It can make you feel empathy and step into the shoes of another. It can teach you something you had never seen or experienced before. It can open you up to a whole new perspective👓.

Propaganda has long been used during wartime to communicate messages with a focus on including artistic flare. For many, the term propaganda has a very negative connotation because some of the primary users of propaganda did so to communicate very controlling, negative messages. 

Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain🇪🇸 from 1936-1975, had propaganda distributed during his regime. Below are two examples from Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The first was recruitment for international communist volunteers to support the communist war efforts. The second has Franco depicted in the lower right corner wearing his military uniform and a fur overcoat and a crest in the lower-left corner stating "

These examples use symbolic imagery and color to convey specific messages to the public in order to enforce certain ideals and cause some to conform their personal perspective to that of the ruling force.

Fidel Castro, Prime Minister (1959-1976) and then President (1976-2008) of Cuba🇨🇺, was also known for his extensive use of propaganda as a control tactic during his communist reign. Billboards and graffiti were displayed throughout Cuba🇨🇺, promoting Castro's ideology. He was an anti-capitalist and a major player in the Cold War.

The two examples below come from Cuba. The first, a billboard, shows Castro on the left and famed revolutionary leader Ernest 'Che' Guevara with a quote "

Vale, pero millones de veces más, la vida de un solo ser humano que todas las propiedades del hombre más rico de la tierra

" above various examples of Cubans in the workforce. The second image is another billboard, a common type of contemporary propaganda, denouncing the blockade🚫 the United States🇺🇸 imposed on Cuban trade by using a visual representation of the iconic Uncle Sam symbol being punched by a fist labeled "Cuba" and the word "

Music🎵 is a dominating artistic force in challenging the perspective of the public. Some singers🎤 are passionate about saving the planet🌎 while others have a strong distaste for certain political parties or leaders. Since the 1980s, the addition of music videos to the artistic process has allowed artists to show some of their thoughts in a visual format along with the audio.

Below is the music video for Selva Negra from the Mexican🇲🇽 rock group Maná. The lyrics of the song are environmentalist in nature. Through the lyrics, they push listeners to consider saving the rainforest. A year after this song was released, a non-profit organization of the same name was created with the goal of natural preservation and conservation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uklKoF1PyHM

 by Calle 13 at first glance looks like a commemorative anthem celebrating Latin American culture, but in digging deeper you will find anti-government sentiments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkFJE8ZdeG8

 pushes listeners to consider the future of the Earth for the sake of the children. If the Earth🌎 isn't cared for now, where will they play?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rFRVwOV-hs

Installation and performance art has grown in popularity recently by groups who have experienced oppression of some form. By creating large, in-your-face pieces of art, the artist is able to challenge the perspective of many onlookers at once and use it as part of the fight for reform.

Mexican artist Elina Chauvet created an installation art piece titled "

" where she places pairs of blood-red shoes👠👠 in a public square. The original piece included 33 pairs of shoes and as the installation travels city to city it now has more than 500 pairs of shoes.

The following mural by Yreina Cervántez is located in Los Angeles, California. It was created to commemorate the Chicano civil rights movement during the 1960s and 1970s.

In Chile🇨🇱, women have taken to the streets in protest and chant while performing a song against sexual violation of women♀️. Their performances have ignited replications of the performance across the globe🌎.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgmq3BpKNvc

Art as a Challenger of Perspective

When societies feel safe and their basic needs are met, art🎨 springs forth into creation. In this section, we will look at how communities value art and some examples of places where art is most highly valued.

Across the world🌎, artists will find big open spaces and beautify them. In Central America, street art is booming. Some items stem from an artistic desire to cover up plain buildings created out of lower-grade materials. Others began as vandalism to make a statement against "the man". Others were decorated by the necessity for advertising or political propaganda. 

Finally, other murals were created to display the past or present struggles Hispanic communities face. Communities show that they value street art by permitting its existence through contracting street artists for permitted work and by minimizing legislation against street artists.

The enigmatic street artist Banksy isn't Hispanic, but has garnered international fame for his street art. One piece attributed to Banksy is depicted below.

Museums began as personal collections of art by the wealthy elite in order to show off the rich purchases they had accumulated. Slowly over time art owners opened their collections to wider and wider audiences. Public institutions began during the Age of Enlightenment💡 in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now, public museums can be found all across the world; some are even digitizing their collections for those who cannot travel✈️ to see the works of art in person. Below are a few examples of notable museums in the Spanish-speaking world.

Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, España🇪🇸 opened to the public on November 19th, 1819. The building's first purpose was to hold the National History Cabinet but was transformed into the Royal Museum of Painting🎨 and Sculpture. Throughout history, it changed names a few more times until today where many people simply refer to it as El Prado. 

This museum has a large collection of works by Bosch, Titian, El Greco, Rubens, Velázquez, and Goya. Collections inside include paintings about saints, the New Testament, royal portraits, secular portraits, trades and professions, the Virgin Mary, mythology, the Old Testament, and social realism/everyday life.

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina🇦🇷 holds both international masterpieces and a collection of Argentinian art🎨. This museum opened on December 25th, 1895 in a different building and moved to the location pictured below in 1909. The museum's permanent collection has around 688 major works of art and over 12,000 sketches✏️, fragments, potteries🥣, and other minor works of art🎨

La Alhambra de Granada, España🇪🇸 is primarily an 

, a fortress, on a hilltop at the edge of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was built by the Moors during their 800-year occupation of southern Spain. The fortress includes multiple ornately decorated buildings and gardens within the protective walls. The architecture itself is an artistic feat by including 

 style which is a mixture of Christian✝️ and Islamic☪️ art applied to structures. Even through multiple occupations and transformations, this historical site has been deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Site and is protected by the United Nations from destruction because of its extraordinary importance to humanity.

How Communities Value Art

Long before the internet, before computers🖥️, before the printing press📰, before written language, there has been art🎨. The mediums may change, but the core concept remains. Art records history, life, and love of the time in which it was created.

One of the earliest sets of prehistoric art recovered in recent history was the cave paintings found in the Altamira cave system in northern España🇪🇸. The paintings depict daily life and what was valued to the people of the time. There are very clear bison and other large animals hunted by prehistoric humans and handprints. The artist used minute detail, realistic colors, and took advantage of the natural rock formations to add to the dimensionality of the subjects.

Aztec art stretches from large stone statues to small pieces of pottery. They utilized items in their surroundings like feathers, precious gemstones 💎, and metals such as silver and gold. The largest source of inspiration for Aztec art seems to come from its complex polytheistic religious system. We now know many of the stone statues were used in religious rituals because of the remnants of blood and precious gemstones💎. 

The stone statues carved by Aztec artisans were huge and strong enough to endure time better than the pottery, featherwork, and intricate metalwork. Pottery cracked and crumbled, feathers flew away or rotted, and metalwork was either traded or melted to become coins💰. Some smaller artistic items discovered or preserved from the Aztec Empire show inspiration from nature and geometric shapes.

Why are paintings 🖼️ of war scenes important in the preservation of history? Well, consider this: how else would we remember what happened? Remember, before the internet 🖥️, before photography 📸, before the printing press 📰, there was paint 🎨. Paintings transcend language and can communicate more information in an instant than what can be written or spoken. As societies grow and move and struggle, art is there to help survivors or future generations understand what happened during the struggle. 

For example, the image below is of the painting "3 de mayo, 1808" by Francisco Goya. It was painted to commemorate a specific military encounter on that date between the French 🇫🇷 and Spanish 🇪🇸. It depicts French soldiers (on the right), under the control of Napoleon Bonaparte, rounding up and executing Spaniards (on the left) in the predawn darkness because the Spanish had committed an uprising the day before.

Paintings of rulers were normal in the time period before photography 📸. The purpose behind painting the royal families over and over was twofold. First, each portrait would show the members of the family at varying ages and stages of life. Second, each portrait was expensive, so owning and displaying an extensive list of portraits was a status symbol to show other royals the level of wealth and power of the family in case of current or future marriage negotiations. The unfortunate side of royal portraiture was the uncertainty of realistic representation. 

Some families committed inter-family marriage and therefore inbreeding occurred. This inbreeding caused some royals, like Carlos II "

", to have physical deformities, but the family commissioned portraits that made his jaw look less deformed than it actually was. A few notable painters gained fame by starting as a royal court painter such as Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Goya. Below is "La familia de Carlos IV"  by Francisco de Goya. 

The invention of photography📸 transformed visual communication and the ability to record historical events accurately. Upon its invention and development, societies no longer had to wait days or weeks for an image to be completed. There was no longer subjectivity from the perspective 👓 of the artist. Photographs capture monumental moments in an instant. Early on in its history, photography was used to document historical events and serve the needs of the media 📰. Photography has been used as evidence of both the victories and the atrocities of war.

How Art Records History

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Unit 1: Global Prehistory, 30,000–500 bce

Unit 2: Ancient Mediterranean, 3500 bce–300 ce 

Unit 3: Early Europe and Colonial Americas, 200–1750 ce 

Unit 4: Later Europe and Americas, 1750–1980 ce

Unit 5: Indigenous Americas, 1000 bce–1980 ce 

UNIT 6: Africa, 1100–1980 ce 

UNIT 7: West and Central Asia, 500 bce–1980 ce 

UNIT 8: South, East, and Southeast Asia, 300 bce–1980 ce 

UNIT 9: The Pacific, 700–1980 ce 

UNIT 10: Global Contemporary, 1980 ce to Present

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Unit 3: Influences of Beauty and Art

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Unit 1: Families in Different Societies

Unit 2: The Influence of Language and Culture on Identity

Unit 3: Influences of Beauty and Art

Unit 4: How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives

Unit 5: Factors That Impact the Quality of Life

Unit 6: Environmental, Political, and Societal Challenges

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Unit 3: Influences of Beauty and Art

AP Spanish Language

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browse by units

Free Reviews﻿

Unit 1: Families in Different Societies﻿

Unit 2: The Influence of Language and Culture on Identity﻿

Unit 3: Influences of Beauty and Art﻿

Unit 4: How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives﻿

Unit 5: Factors That Impact the Quality of Life﻿

Unit 6: Environmental, Political, and Societal Challenges﻿

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Free Reviews

Unit 1: Families in Different Societies

Unit 2: The Influence of Language and Culture on Identity

Unit 3: Influences of Beauty and Art

Unit 4: How Science and Technology Affect Our Lives

Unit 5: Factors That Impact the Quality of Life

Unit 6: Environmental, Political, and Societal Challenges

Blogs