A few reflections on Art

Art was traditionally both a means of communicating beauty and ideals. The classical statues were designed to be both adornment and a focus for displaying ideals. The art of the renaissance attempted to communicate both beauty and truth. The beauty could be communicated by the quality of paint, scenes, humans in the picture and other factors. The ideas could be communicated by various visual cues well understood by a yet largely illiterate society.

The means of modern art are those of free expression. The central theme is to let the whim of the moment take ahold and see if the product is considered artistic. The spirit of art is considered to reside in the individual that the elimination of external constraints will allow the freer expression thereof. The act of self-expression is hailed as a value in of itself and ideas have become a more important element of modern art while shape has become a new element in the non-idea side of art.

The difference in the philosophies of the ancient artists is stark in contrast to many trendy artists. Why is self-expression valuable in itself? Is it that the pressure to communicate is more pressing? If so, the ancient artists and those under totalitarian regimes must have been remarkably unimaginative and left with little to communicate. Rather it appears that an element of modern culture is the narcissism that what one desires to communicate is necessarily worth communicating. The idea of beauty has also disappeared from the trendy artists and leaves us with more ephemeral concepts like “expression” or “profundity” that communicates nothing in any easily understood visual language. The ideas communicated in much modern work like Diego de Rivera and his ilk are those of separation and revolution. We’ve been down that sorry road before. The Italian futurists also supported WWI as a revolutionary event. The goal of shocking the viewer has become an element of a modern art that seeks to overturn taboos as limits on self-expression.

Yet did not the ancient artists also know how to express themselves. Did they not have emotions and ideas as well? They saw horror and yet could paint beauty while modern artists declared that there could be no more beauty in response to the SHOAH. They accepted the use of standard mediums of expression in a manner that the viewer could understand the message without and explanation that the saltshaker juxtaposed to the aspirin bottle on the chessboard is symbolic of something none but the author has heard of.