Talk damn you! (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tentofpoverty) wrote,@ 2005-12-05 17:12:00 |
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What is Art?
Thirteen days and counting. I need everyone's MSN addresses.
I wrote this about art and I like it...so read it:
Humans have been creating art since prehistoric times. Each culture and historic time seems to have its own definition of what art is. Likewise, each person creates his own ideals for how art should look.
Studying the varied kinds of art and asking questions about the role art plays within cultures is a fascinating topic that can fill a lifetime. In the 20th century, artists often have created works that raise questions about art itself. "What is art?" is not a simple question with only one correct answer. Leading American Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller have moved it to a spiritual state that “transcends” the physical and empirical, but I tend to agree with Leo Tolstoy’s concept of art when he says,
“The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man's expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example; one man laughs, and another who hears becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears feels sorrow.”
Art is a condition of human life and is one means of intercourse between persons. Through art it is possible to express feelings of joy, suffering, fear, and love – the whole gambit of human emotions – to your fellow man. Art can be anything that affects your senses of hearing and site. I am by no means an aesthetician, but I evaluate art on its ability to evoke a response from my subconscious mind. If I can connect with a piece of art on a personal level, then the artist clearly did his job. With this view of art it is hard to give honest criterion. Frankly, the criteria changes from genre to genre and from piece to piece.
Diana Thorneycroft, a prominent Canadian artist, produced a serious of provocative drawings titled Foul Play depicting famous cartoon characters in violent posses. A black and white sketch of Bert from Sesame Street hanging by a noose with his neck clearly broken is one such example. While eventually removed from Winnipeg’s SITE gallery for fear of legal action, the drawings are the pinnacle of modern art. The drawings reflect the hypocritical way that modern society ignores the violence that is often at the heart of child’s play. The artist communicates her distaste for violent games such as “cowboys and Indians,” football, and others that teach children to embrace their primal instincts to the art patron in the most effective way possible. Seeing these lovable characters from childhood caught in their death throws or other such compromising positions causes the viewer to connect with the message; evoking feelings of disgust, sorrow, and even pain. Foul Play brings about a certain intrapersonal evaluation that casts aspersions on the innocence of our beloved childhood games. Using my criteria, based on Tolstoy’s work, Thorneycroft’s sketches definitely score a ten out of ten.
Art is an intercourse between artist and patron. Throughout history, artists have used varying mediums, from stone and chisel, pen and paper, instrument to ear, and film to screen to convey their feelings to an audience at large. Art is humanity captured and disseminated.
Thirteen days and counting. I need everyone's MSN addresses.
I wrote this about art and I like it...so read it:
Humans have been creating art since prehistoric times. Each culture and historic time seems to have its own definition of what art is. Likewise, each person creates his own ideals for how art should look.
Studying the varied kinds of art and asking questions about the role art plays within cultures is a fascinating topic that can fill a lifetime. In the 20th century, artists often have created works that raise questions about art itself. "What is art?" is not a simple question with only one correct answer. Leading American Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller have moved it to a spiritual state that “transcends” the physical and empirical, but I tend to agree with Leo Tolstoy’s concept of art when he says,
“The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man's expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example; one man laughs, and another who hears becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears feels sorrow.”
Art is a condition of human life and is one means of intercourse between persons. Through art it is possible to express feelings of joy, suffering, fear, and love – the whole gambit of human emotions – to your fellow man. Art can be anything that affects your senses of hearing and site. I am by no means an aesthetician, but I evaluate art on its ability to evoke a response from my subconscious mind. If I can connect with a piece of art on a personal level, then the artist clearly did his job. With this view of art it is hard to give honest criterion. Frankly, the criteria changes from genre to genre and from piece to piece.
Diana Thorneycroft, a prominent Canadian artist, produced a serious of provocative drawings titled Foul Play depicting famous cartoon characters in violent posses. A black and white sketch of Bert from Sesame Street hanging by a noose with his neck clearly broken is one such example. While eventually removed from Winnipeg’s SITE gallery for fear of legal action, the drawings are the pinnacle of modern art. The drawings reflect the hypocritical way that modern society ignores the violence that is often at the heart of child’s play. The artist communicates her distaste for violent games such as “cowboys and Indians,” football, and others that teach children to embrace their primal instincts to the art patron in the most effective way possible. Seeing these lovable characters from childhood caught in their death throws or other such compromising positions causes the viewer to connect with the message; evoking feelings of disgust, sorrow, and even pain. Foul Play brings about a certain intrapersonal evaluation that casts aspersions on the innocence of our beloved childhood games. Using my criteria, based on Tolstoy’s work, Thorneycroft’s sketches definitely score a ten out of ten.
Art is an intercourse between artist and patron. Throughout history, artists have used varying mediums, from stone and chisel, pen and paper, instrument to ear, and film to screen to convey their feelings to an audience at large. Art is humanity captured and disseminated.
