Art

Osnat Tzadok asked:


How thought provoking a piece of art can be depends how open you are to the message an artist is trying to tell you. The most artistic work from the 19th century to around the 1970’s was called “modern art”. This approach had artists displaying their emotions and abstractions on canvas as they were able to veer away from the traditional concepts of painting that had been used since the Renaissance era. During the second half of the twentieth century, modern art turned its name more towards contemporary art. Contemporary art encompasses all art being done now. It tends to include any art made from around the 1970s to the present, or after the end of the modern art period.

      When talking about art, modern is not used as a synonym for contemporary. The art that was first defined as modern was the art of the first half of the 20th century. Futurism, Cubism, Constructivism are all parts of modern art. Contemporary art is exactly what the name says, the art of today or the very recent past. Characterized by no real common ground, contemporary art offers a wide range of styles.

      Since World War Two, art movements have included Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Post-modernism, Minimalism and Feminist art. The number of art movements has grown so much that virtually every year avant-garde movements with new names have surfaced in the art world. One movement that dominated contemporary art for several decades was one of the movements I just mentioned, Abstract Expressionism. Artists in this movement felt that the expression of their feelings was the main reason for making art, and the art they made generally had no reference to anything in the external world.

      Although many people love modern and contemporary art, there are some that do not think of it as an art. These viewers think of art as being something like portraits or landscapes….something recognizable. When modern and contemporary artists create something that makes them think, something that is not easily recognizable, then these viewers reject the idea of this even being art.

      After reading through a survey concerning Contemporary art, I noted one quote regarding the matter. She states, “I just don’t think it takes any great talent to spatter paint on a canvas (Jackson Pollack) or paint cubes (Various Artists). How does one discern any meaning to such things? It is like the ink blots during a psychological exam? How do tell good splattering from bad splattering? It’s much easier to look at a painting that gives you some sort of idea of the message it’s trying to convey.” So similar to abstract art, it is more about understanding the concept and knowing about the artist and their artwork to truly grasp the meaning of what they are trying to portray.

      So for today’s world, we will try to enjoy what contemporary art brings us. We will learn to interpret what contemporary artists try to portray with their work. Art is a form of expression, a mode of communication that is supposed to convey some sort of message from artist to viewer. How that is done is up to the artist, and how the message is received is up to each individual viewer.

http://www.OsnatFineArt.com



CALEB

Michael de Bruges asked:


Since the sixties, the idea of what art is, or should be, has been endlessly debated. After having exhausted the possibilities of traditional forms, modernism ceased to attract newcomers and new attempts to create art took controversial forms. The notion of art became ever more stretched and quite naturally void of comprehensible content.

The art of the late 20th century transgressed definitely. Refusing to have work judged by aesthetic criteria, artists made their art ‘conceptual’ and as such incomprehensible to the consumer. The 21 st century, for its part, says that its art is ‘emotional’, an equally singular and sterile idea that will inevitable lead to the same degree of understanding.

Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about evolution in art as a path that necessarily leads forwards. Art has entered a blind alley. To get out maybe we need to get back; maybe we need to turn on our own tracks.

Art cannot be reduced to an instrument for levelling out social hierarchy. Art can neither be a means for expressing individual psychedelic experiences, nor a vehicle to promote abstract and muddled ideas. Let’s avoid the tendency of confounding art with self idolatry and navel-staring. Even if art is not for everyone, it is necessarily shared by some. If there is no communion between the artist and his audience there is no sharing and, necessarily, there is no work of art. Art is intuitively felt and shared. When art is in need of explanation, you can be sure that there is no Art present. Most of the movements that have dominated the realm of gratuitous creativity these last decades we can thus safely and painlessly forget.

What we stamp “art” is as elusive as ‘being’. Not being able to explain doesn’t mean that we can dispense of its reality or its use. As well as we know that we, ourselves, are , and that art is , we know that there is Art. This certainty on art can conveniently be called classicist , as it permeates all ages. It was present two thousand years ago and it is present today, it’s a constant. A contemporary art, regardless of its age, is doing nothing else than positioning itself against the classical undercurrent, always present. The quirks, more or less ephemeral, are the signs of the epoch, of the Zeitgeist .

The remarkable thing about art is that it bears witness. But art is not documentary in character; it doesn’t pretend to be objective, exhaustive or true to reality. The ability to discern and appreciate art is a human constituent and a timeless one. A shared perception of art has prevailed through centuries, through millennia, and is today as present as ever. This classicist view of art should not be confounded with having a preference for the Greek or Roman era. We use ‘classicist’ to mark timeless , that is, what has been intuitively shared since time immemorial. The best works of the modern art movement are as classical as a Michelangelo; they are simply adapting the eternally same to current ideas and circumstances.

Let’s not be duped by psychotherapeutic activity being disguised as art. Let’s not bother with art that is moral or metaphysical. Art doesn’t need to pass on messages; art just needs to be understood, intuitively.



CORY