after several days of work ugliness, I’m baaaaaaack
The other day, the wife and I went to a museum on the Stanford campus called
the “Cantor Arts center” there was a temporary exhibit about the photo’s of
Andy Warhol… and, and in this museum there are several permanent
exhibits like Early European art Egyptian and Greek art and there was the
Rodin sculptures like “The Thinker” and indigenous American Art along with
African, Oceanic and Asian Art… so when you walked from room to room,
you often traveled thousands of miles and thousands of years…….
The first room we went into was the Warhol exhibit… photos taken
from roughly 1976 to his death in 1987… there were nudes, male and female,
and his famous Campbell soup photo’s along with shots of famous people…
then with a 10 second walk you were in a room with African Art, then
Oceanic Art in the next room… think of each type of art… and compare
that art with say, Egyptian Art or Greek Art which is quite well known…
so, what art or what time period would you think as “Art”?
and then compare that time period or Art, with say, mid 19 century
Art with its paintings of people standing in formal poses in their fine clothes…
Now think of the Mona Lisa… that is perhaps the most famous painting
in the world… but for most of human history, the Mona Lisa wouldn’t
have been considered Art, it was psychological too different from
the local art being created to be considered “ART”
Would, say African Artist of the mid 18 century be able to create the Mona Lisa?
No, but why? because the mindset of the African Artist is different then the mindset
of the artist of the early 1600’s when the Mona Lisa was painted…
We can compare and contrast the art of Africa and the art of the Renaissance
and we can see the completely and different mindset of the two places and
era’s…………
Art is not only the reflection of the Artist but an reflection of the time period
when the art was being created… Art gives us a sense of what matters enough
to be recorded by Artist…for we only record what matters to us……
If we look at Medieval art, we can see a sameness about that art, we can see
the same forces drove the artist in London as it did in Paris and as it did in Florence…
we see very similar art in all three cities with similar idea’s……… the mind set in all
three cities was roughly the same and this is reflected in the art produced in the middle ages…
A few years ago, the wife and I went to Europe and we went to all the museums,
and we saw a gazillion Madonna with child and they all look very similar, but
then art begin to change with the new thoughts, a new understanding of the universe
and art began to reflect those new thoughts and understanding…Art changed……
the Art produced reflects ever changing thoughts and understanding of the world
by the artist…think about the Art and think about how the nude picture was
at times acceptable and at other times, the nude wasn’t acceptable…….
the changing of morals lead to changes in art… recall the idea that the art
reflects what the artist or society believes to be important… you don’t paint
unimportant or useless things, but, but that is exactly what happened…
Artist began to paint everyday life of the “common” man…
we no longer see only the king or nobles being painted, we see
the average person on the street being painted… and this change is
a change in the thinking of the artist… where we see the “common” person
rise in importance, become more valuable in thought…we see the rise of
democracy in the arts first, then came the rise of the common man as reflected in
the economic or social or the political… the artist leads the way in seeing
the common man as becoming important…
Art has always reflected the understanding that the important
people of the world was to be reflected in the art…
in other words, think about the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey”…
the two books were about important nobles or kings, the two books
weren’t about the common man as the common man was unimportant…
Art for thousands of years wasn’t about the common man, Art was about
the king or nobles or the gods… Art didn’t reflect any knowledge of
or understanding of the common man because the common human being
wasn’t valuable or worth understanding… only the great person was worth
art… and this state of affairs lasted for thousands of years……. the changes
in the political and social aspects of our lives changed the nature of art…
we now see the common people being represented in Art starting
after 1500 AD…… ….and this new representation in art is because of the massive
social and economic and political changes that start to sweep Europe
art reflects the social and political and economic thinking going on in the world…
we see this in the rise of the new art form, the Novel, in which we see that the
common man becomes the “star” of this new art form… the common man like
Tom Jones and Don Quixote become the new stars of this new vision of society…
Art reflects the changes in society… so what do we see when we begin to see
the new art of the 20th century, which actually began in the 1860’s… with
impressionism and leading us to the many new styles of the 20th century…
Post-impressionism, realism, Cubism, Surrealism, abstract, pop art, fauvism…
to list a few of the new art movements of the last 140 years……
think of the art and artist of the 20th century… Picasso, Warhol, Kahlo,
Matisse, Braque… think about the art they created…compare and contrast
the new art with the “Old” art after the Renaissance till 1860… the new movement
reflects the changes and how we understand human beings… we see human beings
being reflected in art as being abstract or without form… for example, look
at Duchamp, “Nude descending a staircase” done in 1912… this is how artist
see human beings now… we have become individual atoms, we have been
reduced and separated from each other into individual atoms with no connection
to society or each other… and that is reflected by the art that is being created……
from the poems to novels to paintings to sculpture, we have been atomized,
separated, alienated from each other… we no longer have a connection to
each other and that is reflected in our art… as we also are no longer connected
to our society or our government……and the art that is being created reflects
this change in how we are perceived and how we perceived others……….
art reflects the modern culture/society/economic and political
status which is the negation of modern man… art reflects the
modern nihilism which negates human beings…just as art shows
us the negation of human beings by showing us as in the “Nude descending the
staircase” that we have been negated socially and artistically……. art reflects this
negation of human beings through the way human beings are being artistically
shown…………in paintings, sculptures, novels, architecture and in music…
the ongoing negation of humans is reflected in today’s art…….
Kropotkin