Many of us don’t realize that art is everywhere. The computer you are using, the pen you are holding, color of your clothes, the chair and desk you are using… all of these were designed by someone; the colors were carefully chosen for a reason. Although that many of us don’t see giant canvas paintings that often anymore, art is still living with us in another form. We see art and use art all the time. Even when you don’t realize, you are making art too.
“When new visual ideas are first introduced by the artist, they are often seen as shocking, and perhaps even as incomprehensible. However, with time the best and most effective of these ideas are accepted. There is nothing harder than trying to grasp what was shocking or illuminating about certain images, or ways of making images, once the shock is gone, and we have all absorbed this bit of visual data into our own vocabularies.”
As an art student, I understand this shock feeling. Looking at art pieces, especially abstract ones, I found it is extremely hard to understand its meaning from lines and geometric shapes. I often stare at the piece for a very long period of time trying to figure out what the artist is trying to say. Sometimes the reason is just the maniacal desire of the shape, or sometimes it can take the artist days or even longer to come up with the idea; sometimes, the painting is about social issues or irony.
“Artists show us new ways to see familiar things, and how to interpret new situations and events through various kinds of visual shorthand.”
Through art, some issues in our lives that we are so used to that we ignore are enlarged by the artist to make us be aware of the problem. Also through learning art, one thing that I thought can be considered “deceitful” is when looking at an art piece the audience is controlled by the artist. It is not what you want to see, it is what the artist wants you to see.
Many artists create for different reasons; most of them can be generalized to the following:
Arts are created on religious rituals.
As I mention in my last post, start from Middle Age, art in western world did a great job on spreading Christianity. Even in today, when you go to churches, many of the crosses were created by artists. Stained glass windows are also a way of making religious art. This type of window is usually seen in the older churches. When the light hit through the window, it often gives people a holy feeling. This type of art evokes people’s feeling to the religion and is also a way of worshipping the God.
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Art is created for a record of the history.
Before camera was invented, people record the history with their pens and folk stories, however that was not enough. People would like to see things in visual. A lot of ceremonies, weddings, and famous people were painted, and these paintings become an important resource of the historians to analyze the ancient world.
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| Marie Antoinette |
Art is created for advertising.
Back in time, when there wasn’t Internet. When the government has something wants to tell people, it use propagandas to inform and motivate people. We learned about these posters in the East Asian unit; China used propagandas to motivate people to trust Mao and join the communist party. This type of art played a significant role in the politics back in the days.
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Art is created for the beauty.
Sometimes artist just want to have fun with their brushes. They just want to create what they think is the beauty or something they believe in. Several blog posts before, I said that the Greek was a big fan of perfectionism. Perfection of the body was one of their beauty standard, therefore they tried to praise perfection in every way they can.
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To sum these up, art is created to interpret things in a new way. Looking at the art that you are making grows better inch by inch is a enjoyable process. New ideas developed through the process and it might be completely different from what your original idea was, but that is completely fine. These ideas will make you the only you in the world; it’s amazing to see how you are different than the others. Making something is a whole new experience from just seeing it, you would think more about the thing you are making; artists do not just use their eyeballs, but also more important, the brain.
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