Melencolia

When cavemen were around, they used art as a way to record their huntings and stories. As the world became more civilized, art became a valued part of a sophisticated society. The early 20th century believed art should reflect only beauty. However, people experienced traumatic events like World War II, and 9/11 and artists took these experiences creating art that was drastically different from the beautiful meadow fields. Ever since then, art has become more provocative leading to debates on whether some contemporary art today is art. Although many people dislike contemporary art, controversy exists because art reflects current culture and our culture has controversial events and every person has a different has a perspective about it.

To understand most period and movements in modern art, one must first understand the context in which they occurred. When one looks at the various artistic styles, one will realize how artists react to historical and cultural changes and how artists perceive their relation to society.

Art in general is a form of expression. Individuals use art to express emotions, passion, or make a statement. Society can have an impact on how an artist chooses to express his or her sentiments. The beauty of it all is that interpretation is what makes art so unique. The same piece of art can mean so many different things due to who is looking at it. Just like everything else, art changes with time. There has been different eras in art that have impacted society as we know it.

Salvador Dali’s 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory is a hallmark of the surrealist movement. Dali famously described his paintings as “hand-painted dream photographs” and The Persistence of Memory is a prime example of that description. The Persistence of Memory depicts striking and confusing images of melting pocket watches and a mysterious fetus-like structure all sprawled over the dreamscape representation of Dali’s home of Port Lligat, Spain. Dali uses strange images, color, and shadows in The Persistence of Memory to convey an abstract view on dreams, time, and reality.

There are several historical, economic, and cultural events that caused the people of this time to look at life in a new way, and thus, art to be

Art has been a major outlet for many artist around the world making masterpieces to represent what they see in the world. As generations pass, and we don’t talk about the past art is the connection to remind us of what once was. Visual art helps us connect to the past by using different art forms to show historical events and cultural beliefs/ trends.

Art is a main effect of the Renaissance. Modern society lives off of art. Many people have jobs that use art such as architects, construction workers, painters, and plenty more. Architects draw, construction workers read blueprints which are drawn, and painters paint. During the Renaissance, famous artist Donatello “rediscovered the technique of perspective…” (Beck 419). Perspective is a known technique of painting and drawing all over the world. Many famous pieces of artwork have perspective. Perspective is used every day not just for artists, but

Any kind of art is a glorious thing in that it could be created from anything, and is filled with meaning. Many artists have influenced new types of arts and new techniques that would change how these artists paint by them learning new adaptations in painting. The early renaissance is a great place to start if you have a high fascination with art, art in the early renaissance was largely religious, with an interest in nature, and the artists paid more attention to human anatomy. Northern renaissance art is also based off of religion but they are also based off of everyday civic interests, and the artists were interested in realism but not in the classicism that interested their early renaissance counterparts. High renaissance art works demonstrate

Art has changed and developed throughout time. I will be writing about two specific time periods that I think were an important part of the revolution of art. The two time periods that I will write about is the Medieval Times and the Renaissance. Art has changed in four main topics. These four topics are subject, color, perspective and realism. The subject changed in Renaissance art from the subject in the Medieval Times. Almost all of the paintings in the Medieval Times were based on religious events and topics. The topic changed from religious events to more secular events during the Renaissance. This is because people became more interested in humanistic topics and the world around us. You can see that the Medieval painting is about Jesus’ crucifixion and the Renaissance

Wanting to be recognized as a theorist and handsome man, he has once given himself the appearance of a charismatic living god. A self-portrait that was done at the age of 28, 1500, he adored himself and was one of his favourite subjects. As a man of style and sophistication, he would portray himself in fine clothes unlike his father, a plain and simple German craftsman. Proud of his long and luxurious hair, under a floppy black-and-white cap it flows, coiled and bright as shown in his self-portrait on how he portrayed himself at the age of 13. Dürer was then recognized for having a mighty flow of ideas, images, and surrealism for the 20th century. His art were not just simple like the solitary mind but of an entire culture that was anything but

This paper will take a look at Salvador Dali’s painting, The Persistence of Memory, painted in 1931. As the viewer can tell, this is a story of time and life. The memories start in the background where all is well and things are straight and calm. Moving on to the cliff, the observer possibly sees a well-behaved teenager. There is nothing horrible here that leads the spectator to gasp, and the viewer knows this person made it through that time in their life. Then the picture moves on to the age of about twenty, the memories are fond but in the distant past. The memories are protected by a white blanket so that they do not just fall into the background. Then something happened where the person had some

The renaissance or “rebirth” was a cultural awakening which spanned from the fourteenth to sixteenth century. A growing interest in humanist traits and classical ideas heavily influenced the art during the renaissance. A growing community of artists provided much needed competition for their profession. The renaissance introduced many different and modern ideas but also remained obedient to classical belief. The unique art of the renaissance spread throughout Europe. Northern European art differed tremendously from Italian art.

Throughout all of known human civilization man has used art as a form of communication to express ideas, emotions, and experiences that speak to each individual differently. What is beautiful about art is not always the way it is created, but rather the way that a certain piece has deeper meaning that portrays the constantly changing world around the artist. Society is like an organism: always growing and morphing, and though it may look the same as it once did, it becomes an entirely different being. With this, for better or for worse, people will always adapt; the time is constantly shifting, and humanity rises above and beyond, resilient, yet at the same time soft and malleable, shaped and sculpted like clay on a pottery wheel. With the external changes humanity has experienced throughout thousands and thousands of years of history, internally we are influenced just as radically. Art, in this sense, becomes a means of interpreting and understanding life.

Dreamscapes, illusions, visions and the irrational all stem from the basis of Surrealism. It was an art movement that started in Paris in 1924, creating a wide interest towards tapping into the psychoanalytic, the unconscious and the use of chance. By unlocking the power of the imagination, artists such as Salvador Dali (1904 - 1989) and Max Ernst (1891 - 1976), felt that they could reach a new level of meaning and dimension. Both of these artists have respectively left a mark on the Surrealist movement through their use of painting and collage. Dali’s painting The Persistence of Memory (1931), creates unfamiliar contexts with the use of illusions and realism. Ernst’s Surrealistic novel Une Semaine de Bonte (1934), is a purely graphic collage novel stemming from the influences of alchemy and metamorphosis. Surrealist aesthetics were a vital part of the movement and the artists themselves strongly lived by them.

“Modern painting, breaking through old conversation, has released countless suggestions which are still waiting to be used by the practical world.”(Gropius) The birth of modernism and modern art goes back to the Industrial Revolution, a period that lasted from the 18th to the 19th century, in which rapid changes in manufacturing, transportation, and technology profoundly affected the social, economic, and cultural conditions of life in Western Europe, North America, and eventually the world. Before the 19th century, artists created art pieces for wealthy people and institution places like the church where they can create art works about storytelling of religious or mythological scenes . These arts were there to instruct the viewers.However, this changed when during the 19th century many artists began to create works that were about people, places, or ideas that interested them, and of which they had direct experience. With the popularization of the idea of a subconscious mind, many artists began exploring dreams, symbolism, and personal iconography as avenues for the depiction of their subjective experiences.Challenging the notion that art must realistically depict the world, some artists experimented with the expressive use of color, non-traditional materials, and new techniques and mediums.