By nature, human beings seek to understand and to be understood. We are curious about life. We want to express our personal interpretation of the world around us, and we want to know the interpretation of others to discover how it compares to our own. Art begins with the creator. An artist is driven to express his or her unique perspective be it a musical score, a painting, a literary work, or any number of other forms. There is satisfaction in the mere act of creating, but the work is fulfilled when it strikes a chord in the being of another. Art is a means of relating one specific insight to others by way of emotion, intellect, and the senses. Art is communication, and its greatness can be determined by the impact it has on both the artists and those experiencing the work.
We first learn of the world through the use of our senses, so it is natural for us to express our innermost concepts as sensory images. Thomas Cole explains the sensory experience he conveys in his painting Kaaterskill Falls saying, “The waterfall may be called the voice of the landscape, for, unlike the rocks and woods which utter sounds as passive instruments played on by the element, the waterfall strikes its own chords, and rocks and mountains reecho in rich unison.” (Gaudio) The painting gives us a tangible visual image of his subjective interpretation. Not only does is have aesthetic appeal, the painting hints of the auditory experience.
Sound has a profound emotional affect on us. Music can conjure memories of our own experiences. It can also convey insight into the life of a composer. Beethoven lived a tumultuous life. At a young age, he experienced the death of his mother. His father then declined into alcoholism, and he struggled with the resp...
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... be a need for self expression and a desire to understand the perception of others. Whether it is a masterpiece or the simplicity of a mother nurturing a newborn babe, art is in the impact of the experience.
Works Cited
Forsythe, Alex, and Noel Sheehy. "Is it not beautiful?." Psychologist 24.7 (2011): 505.
Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 31 July 2011.
Gaudio, Michael. "At the Mouth of the Cave: Listening to Thomas Cole's Kaaterskill
Falls.” Art History 33.3 (2010): 457. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO.
Web. 31 July 2011.
Gopnik, Blake. "Buying Art You Can't Take Home." Newsweek 158.1 (2011): 75.
Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 31 July 2011.
Images Cited
Thomas Cole, Kaaterskill Falls, 1826. Oil on canvas, 64 × 92cm. Hartford, CT:
Georgia O'Keeffe, The Lawrence Tree, oil on canvas, 31 x 40 inches, 1929
Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance,” –Aristotle
According to Webster’s Dictionary, art is “human expression of objects by painting, etc” (10). The words “human experience” adds meaning to art. Artists reveal their inner thoughts and feelings through their work. When we study a painting by Salvador Dali, the strange objects and the surrealist background portrays the eccentricity of the painter. Some ideas cannot be explained verbally. They can only be shown via a medium. We can get across what is in our minds or our hearts by a stroke of a brush, a drop of paint, a row of words, or something else. But to express ourselves, we do not need to limit what we call art.
It is art fulfilling its role in society. It is art that brings the moral issues. It is art that makes us human.
If I were to ask you what is art, and how can one find it? What would you say? Well if it were me being asked those question, I would simply say that art to me is a form of a picture; a visual painting or model of some design and it could be found all among us. You may define it differently only because art could be defined in many ways. I could simply say that art to me is a form of a picture; a visual painting or model of some design. Well according to an article written by Shelley Esaak, an art history expert she mentioned that art has a way of stimulating different parts of our brains to make us laugh or incite us to riot, with a whole gamut of emotions in between. She also mentioned that art gives us a way to be creative and express ourselves. [1]
Art is a medium used by people world wide to express their ideas, their fears,
One of the first forms of art discovered was paleolithic cave paintings, during the late 19th century by a group of scholars. The theory behind the paintings was that it was a made for the pleasure of hunters while they took a break from hunting for the day. Other scholars then believed it wasn’t the painting itself that stood out, but that the placement of each object is what stood out to them the most. This is what art is all about. Art isn’t supposed to mean just one thing, it is to give people the opportunity to think outside of the box.
Since the dawn of time, man has been inspired by the beauty of art. The Macquarie Concise Dictionary describes art as “the production or expression of what is beautiful, appealing or of more than ordinary significance”. I interpret the word art to refer to the physical reproduction of the artists own perception of the world around them.
AA theory by Clive Bell suggests the pinpoints the exact characteristic which makes a work true art. According to Bell, an artwork must produce “aesthetic emotion” (365). This aesthetic emotion is drawn from the form and formality of an artwork rather than whether or not it is aesthetically pleasing or how well it imitates what it is trying to depict. The relation of objects to each other, the colors used, and the qualities of the lines are seemingly more important than what emotion or idea the artwork is trying to provoke. Regardless of whether or not the artwork is a true imitation of certain emotions, ideals, or images, it cannot be true art unless it conjures this aesthetic emotion related to formality (367).
Art is an expression of feelings, body language, and culture produced by humans. Art can be expressed in many different ways, and in many different forms from time to time! You’d be amazed with the different types of skilled work artists come up with each day and it’s all just someone, one person expressing how they feel or what they believe. One form of art that I find very interesting is Fauvism.
In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man.
Art is an expressive form of creativity and expression. Art involves the basic elements and principles that aid to form paintings, sculptures, and other forms of artwork.
The mind creates the emotions and ideals responsible for art. The brain is capable of imagining glorious things, and art is the physical manifestation of these ideals. These ideals are usually intense emotions with aesthetic power (Wilson, 220). Art organizes these emotions in a matter that can easily express the ideals to...
Art itself consists of various techniques and mediums utilised by practitioners in a visual form to portray an event, idea or communicative purpose. In this contemporary era, art has diverged in to varied styles and movements, majority between the traditional arts and digital arts. Art itself overall is defined as “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power” (Stevenson, 2010, p88)
Art has evolved and regenerated itself many times during our human existence. These differences are defined through changes in styles under various theories. During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a style known as Expressionism became popular. During this movement the artists were trying to use their artwork as a tool of expression toward life. It was mainly dominant in the nonrepresentational arts, such as abstract visual arts and music. It also was probably one of the most difficult movements to understand because the whole point of the piece lay within the artist. Not only was it a movement, it defined the act of art as a whole. From the beginning of time, each work of art, excluding replicas, show a way of expressing one's self. Every artist puts a piece of his or herself into their artwork. Who really is to determine what that work of art was meant to express?