What Is Art?
The first thing that popped into my mind when asked this question was, " Can you really define art?"
I've never heard of anyone giving me a straight, by the book, definition. Quite honestly I don't think that it is even possible to define art into one simple term that agrees with everyone.
Going over everybody's perspective of art, I came to realize how different views are. Some people thought everything we looked at was art, others disagreed. Writing notes for this lecture started to become difficult because we didn't focus on one thing as art, but multiple views from the entire class, all of them bring correct to the person. Even thought it was difficult, it wasn't impossible.
Art, to me, is everything. Of course that comes from my religious perspective.
I'm going to deviate a bit on why I believe everything is God's art and I swear I don't mean to be preachy at all. This is all just an experience and turning point I had a few years back and I think that it helps in my view of what is ART. When I was young I never had a religious background. After going to a christian camp ( Camp Ozark is the best!), I learned my faith, but it was never strong. One day I was at a concert at my dad's church around my middle school years. It was a nice little concert with the bands Jeff Deyo and Leeland. during a little "intermission" we went outside to have some good barbecue that my dad was making. While standing in line one of the members from Jeff Deyo stood behind me. I had no idea what his name was, or anything about him, nor him me, but he said hello anyway. We exchanged small talk and after a minute of silence he starred at me. I was thinking, " OK, this guy is starting to freak me out" when suddenly he asked me if I painted or drew. I have to admit I was stunned. I never mentioned anything about my new found talent. A bit speechless I told him yes and he smiled. " I could tell." He said and nodded. " God has wonderful things planned for a talent like yours." After that he walked away.
From that experience, it hit me that the Lord created everything and shaped them in his view. We are his art and nature is his art. Now paintings made by man are still art. You might not like it, but it holds value to others and surely the artist. When something is made, it is an artifact that can inspire emotion ( positive and negative), reflect on thought, or represent something.
All through history there is art. That is because people have an impulse to leave their mark. It became a visual language. Even the cave paintings from forever ago were communication and art! It was kind of mind boggling. I think that looking at the paintings from the B.C didn't look like any communication because in today's age, we all have different priorities than those of thousands of years ago.
Even though cave paintings are of a different era, it's easily recognizable what it is supposed to be. A bison.
We learned about different styles:
Naturalistic
Realistic
Stylized
Abstract
The cave painting is very realistic. As time has progressed, we have gone from naturalistic and realistic art, to very modern and abstract art. If we had a time machine i bet someone from the past would be terrified of the paintings today because of how different on the scale they are. Art today represent different things than art of a hundred years ago. Usually naturalistic and realistic paintings are representational. Meaning only the important things are left in the painting. Things non representational isn't based on the real world. It still means something but it doesn't represent something tangible.
Here is a picture of the representation scale we wrote in class based on pictures shown.
(sorry for the horrible handwriting :] )
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