The Evolution of Art - Essay Example

? 18 March The evolution of art in terms of concept and definition over the past 200 years. The relationship between aesthetics and contemporaryart. Art is the pure expression of all the transformations that our society experiences. Therefore, as history takes its course, dealing with numerous changes in economic paradigms, political movements and intellectual thought, art and aesthetics evolve as well, transcending to a different level of human perception. Over the past 200 years, art history has recorded a large number of artistic movements, some of great scale, others less important; however, they all turned out to either continue or oppose one another, hence being, without doubt, strongly interconnected. Each of them had a specific view on the role of art within society, as well as its purpose and techniques. This is why, in my paper, I will study the most important artistic movements, starting with the 1800s and leading my analysis up to nowadays in order to understand how the definition of art has changed over the past 200 years and how can the term “aesthetic” be used in relation to contemporary art. The late 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century were intellectually and culturally defined by the virtuous and rational Enlightenment movement. The ideas that it advocated were fueled from a renewed admiration for antiquity that sprung among intellectuals and artists at the time. This also triggered the development of the artistic movement called Neoclassicism, “which incorporated the subjects and styles of ancient art” (Kleiner 766). For Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the first modern art historian, the “discovery of the beauty of Greek art was not of merely antiquarian interest: it was of vital importance to the creation of new beauty in the present and future” (Prettejohn 32). Therefore, the neoclassical artists followed the ancient aesthetic paradigm and dived into creating simple, unpretentious, yet imposing beauty through their art. A neoclassical artist understood that he had the responsibility to recognize, embrace and bring out through his art the Greek ideal of the perfect sculptural form and the simple, sturdy and virtuous lines of Roman architecture. Neoclassicism does not only pursue a study of beauty, but also indulges itself into an admiration of simple and serene beauty. Representative artists for this period are Jacques-Louis David and Angelica Kauffmann who favored subjects inspired from the Roman ancient history. However, towards the middle of the 19th century, beauty in art slips from its neoclassical simplicity and rational purity towards mystic and subjective grounds. Even David’s students, Antoine-Jean Gros, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, although pursuing the study of ancient Greek and Roman art, started to manifest interest in new, unexplored subjects that were a deviation from the neoclassicist principles: “the realm of the exotic and the erotic” as well as “fictional narratives for the subjects of their paintings” (Kleiner 781). These artists eased in the transition from Neoclassicism to a new artistic movement, known as the Romantic movement. Romanticism promoted the freedom of imagination and shifted art towards a strong emphasis on feeling, intuition and emotion. While neoclassical artists were concerned to transmit an idea in a simple, yet perfect form, the romantic artists aimed to convey dramatic emotion through powerful images. For romantics, beauty was not to be found at the surface of forms, but in the deep human imagination; they were driven towards the occult, the fantastic and the deep, unexplored craters of human unconsciousness. If Neoclassicism found its inspiration in Antiquity, Romanticism found it in the Middle Ages, also known as, the Dark Ages. Important romantic artists are William Blake, Eugene Delacroix and Francisco Goya who depicted historical, heroic or extraordinary characters that were living an almost theatrical experience on the canvas. This Romantic explosion in emotion and subjectivism triggered the rise of an opposing artistic movement, Realism, which originated in the mid 19th century in France and lasted towards the end of the 19th century. The progress in science and the industrial revolution reinforced the precision and the rationalism of the 18th century Enlightenment and called for a kind of art that would depict real, common characters, in real-life settings: “realists focused their attention on the experiences and sights of everyday contemporary life and disapproved of historical and fictional subjects on the grounds that they were neither real and visible nor of the present” (Kleiner 798). Realists had an objective eye, did not induce themselves into exaggerations and depicted subjects that previous artists did not manifest any interest in: peasants and workers in mundane settings. An excellent example in this matter is Gustave Courbet’s The Stone Breakers (1849), which portrays two workers during their ordinary activity of breaking stone. Therese is nothing romantic, idealistic or extraordinary about their activity; on the contrary, the painting is aiming to present an unaltered image of the reality itself, as if the artist’s eye was a mirror and his art- a reflection of what surrounds him. Therefore, by this point, art did not have the purpose of mere aesthetics any more. Still, the study of beauty returns in impressionism, but under a different meaning. The Impressionist movement, which marked the end of the 19th century, tried to capture the beauty of the moment, the energy of life at the moment, “conveying the elusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions” (Kleiner 822). Impressionists studied the relationship between light and color and intended to create an intersection between their visual perception and their inner feelings. They reinvented the concept of beauty through a new combination of colors and brush strokes, as well as subjects and emotions. As an opposition to impressionists, who tried to “reproduce the impression of the surrounding world” (Art History Guide), expressionists, aimed to convey their personal interpretation of the exterior world according to their inner feelings. Expressionism makes use of exaggerations and distortions in order to achieve artistic expression. Therefore, from the point of view of expressionists, art is a means of expression through which an artist can impose a powerful impression: “expressionism is not so much concerned with representing accurate forms and harmony, but rather it strives to achieve the highest expression intensity” (Art History Guide). The study of beauty is left aside to make room for the exaggerations, alterations, primitivism and twisted visions, often including elements of “violence and vividness” (Kleiner 835). Expressionism opened a path to abstraction in art that cubism took to the extreme. At the beginning of the 20th century, cubism did not pursue the aesthetics in art, but it did aim for geometrical analogies and abstractionism, by “introducing new possibilities not only for aesthetic contemplation, but for art making” (Prettejohn 176). Cubists divided, with their agile eye, objects from real life into pieces and then reconstructed them of a piece of canvas; this way, they believed they could achieve a multi-angular perspective. For example, in The Portughese (1911) Jacques Braque is interested in dissecting the form and placing it interactively on the canvas; he concentrated on the way form and space work together in order to create a dynamic composition. Thus, the aesthetic experience is no longer the purpose in making art. From Neoclassicism to Cubism, art and its definition have changed dramatically. At the same time, aesthetics (or the study of beauty) has gradually lost ground as the sole meaning of art. Cubism, as previously shown, has eliminated aesthetics as an important pillar in the process of creating art. Contemporary art takes this idea further; aesthetics does not find a place in the main purpose of a contemporary artists. The struggles and the drama of the modern society have taken the place of aesthetics as meaning of art; contemporary art is not necessarily a study of beauty, and I am not saying it can’t be, but it is mainly the study of the struggle of the modern individual, the struggle between beauty and destruction, between moral and immoral. This idea has been strongly developed in the artistic movement called abstract expressionism. Barnett Newman, one of the main representatives of the movement, opposed aesthetics and considered it a subject completely detached from art itself – “he went on to attack aesthetics for what he called its irresponsibility in presuming to speak on art with the authority of philosophy or even science” (Mattick 119). Barnett Newman is an artist who explored the great human emotions- struggles and tragedies- and expressed them in abstract forms, in particular, through color: brighter single tone colors spread on a large canvas marked by thicker and thinker dark colored stripes. He doesn't use particular shapes, but simple lines; still, he manages to transmit intense emotions. Performance artists, at their turn, expand the gap between art and aesthetics; they decide to explore art through the manipulation movements, gesture and sounds performed in front of an audience, thus replacing the traditional concept of static artworks. At the same time, the public has the option to participate in the performance; therefore, the artist is also taking a leap forward in its relationship with the viewer. However, in order to immortalize moments of the performance, usually there are photographs taken during the act on stage. In conclusion, I would like to state the fact that art has experienced an evolution full of revelations over the past 200 years. The study of beauty lies at the foundation of art and without it, artistic though would not have become what it is today. However, contemporary art has moved on to studying new meanings and finding new purposes to the process of art making, but always remaining true to the exploration of human needs, desires and struggles. Works Cited and Consulted: 1. Art History Guide. 15 March 2010 . 2. Gaiger, Jason. Frameworks for Modern art. Yale University Press, 2004. 3. Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Global History. Wadsworth: Clark Baxter, 2010. 4. Mattick, Paul. Art in its time. London: Routledge, 2003. 5. Prettejohn, Elizabeth. Beauty and Art: 1700-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Read More