Art is constantly participating as part of the past. Every stroke of paint applied to canvas represents a point in life, where someone desires to visualize an idea. Artists permit us to a moment in time, of a once felt condition, of a personality, and of a life. As of the last two years I have been immersed in the study of the visual arts, and I feel it would be wrong for an individual to write an essay on “what does art teach us about?” but should be explored as “what does art teach me about?” No person can be expected to speak for everyone on the subject of artistic creation. Art only holds truth to its maker, and the viewer makes connections to the symbolism internally, by re-experiencing moments in their own lives.
Presently I am very skeptical that art may hold any truth in the world we live. This thought was fashioned from the moment I discovered Descartes’ Meditations. At that time, my primary focus pertained to the fallibility of human senses, and how they are the only thing connecting our thoughts to the material world. Descartes deemed it necessary to categorize his thoughts into definite kinds, of which can help sort through thoughts of truth and falsity. He breaks it into three different classifications:
1. Ideas- which are images or conceptions of things (i.e. man/sky/god)
2. Volitions, emotions- an idea which is an object of the thought
3. Judgments- directed toward the object of that thought
So in essence, we have ideas, and from those ideas we gain emotions, and added together we end up with a judgment. Internally, ideas cannot be false, for example a fish or dragon, I imagine both, and see both distinctly in my mind, so the ideas themselves are not in any way false. For me to have an idea of something, I must have therefore seen that something sometime in my existence hitherto. The wills and emotions of ideas are also true, for they are things of which reflect my desires. Any falsity pertaining to ideas falls under judgment, which must be watched due to making mistakes. The most common mistake is conforming to things outside of us, and Descartes explains that if ideas were considered as modes of thought, there would be very little room for those kinds of mistakes.
By determining that it is the judgment of humans to which mistakes are made, I can safely say ideas bring truth in art, but only to the artist. It is the artist’s experiences in life that are found through his own unique senses. No two people can share the same emotions within a similar moment. For example, if I were watching a sunset with another person, they could not be occupying the same space, smelling the same smells, or be distracted by the same distractions, etc. So for two people to say they relate on the same topic they can only be making a generally vague agreement. An experience is internally known, only by an individual, but why must an artist attempt to share their desires to the rest of the world? Because an artist must have a reason to create their work, otherwise why would so many people pursue the world of art?
If we examine the first artists who began painting before civilization, we can see that art held a purpose, but its values differ comparatively from contemporary times. One of the first things we must realize is that this art is not intended to serve aesthetic ends. This form of art served as a purpose, mainly pointing out the needs within their own societies. The ancient arts would also be classified as craft, where there is functional means to whatever is created. Consider pottery, clothing, and primitive religious sculptures as the particulars dealing with these ancient modes of art. During such a time, ancient people would be concentrating on survival due to the lack of technology. The aesthetics dealing with art could be said to have been useless to man at that time. Cave paintings seem to demonstrate an early version of documentation. The Bushman rock paintings show the importance of recorded information to the people of the time. It is hard to say whether the paintings are a tribute to a deity of power, or demonstrate a mode of instruction. Visually it could be easier to see what the hunter was killing, and how the kill occurred, and this is in light of the fact that there was no written word and possibly very primitive forms of language. As the ancient art stands, it seems to show people of this time what was important of that age. We get a glimpse of how these people were able to survive, and what values were most important to them at the time. It is hard to say that there is any truth in these ancient sculptures and paintings, considering their age and the primitive minds that created them. The ancient documentary paintings show us a slight representation of their life, and we can use other elements to tie together all of what happened during that time, but we will never know the true experience of which this artist was attempting to portray.
Predating the Greek and Renaissance eras there seemed to be a drastic difference in artistic methods, truths and qualities within art. In accordance with the ancient carvers and painters, they seem to have created works through memory and imagination. Mostly the ancients thrived on the passion towards their Gods, and the living strategies surrounding their lives. Art was in some ways a tool for observation of creatures and life. Once the ancient Greeks began sculpting, it seemed as if they were dealing with much more than what was surrounding them in the external world. They were producing large marble sculptures, representing humans with their own ideals on perfection. The artists were utilizing their talents as a devotional tool to their gods. They mastered carving techniques to create the perfect human form, and began looking at art aesthetically. The use of composition and form brought this world of dust to something of perfection and beauty. It seems as if beauty became an important part of creating art, of which is desired by all men. We know there is beauty, like when we look at a flower or a beautiful sunset, but why is it that we focus on such an element in life? All humans know beauty, but what is beautiful, and why do we wish to attain such a characteristic? Beauty is almost put into a realm of higher power or a state of higher perfection. But perfection is, as bluntly said, one thing. If there is perfection nothing else can be better than such a thing, and nothing can be desired if such perfection is attained.
Beauty is an essential part of ancient art, and through the ages art became a higher motive then just that of documenting a time a place. The problem with Greek and Renaissance art is not the piece itself, but more so the even lesser truth it holds. The artists were not working from everyday life memories and experiences, but were using models and optics to dramatize a moment, which may have occurred. The use of a model removes any truth relating to the moment at which the artist is trying to portray, unless it is merely a study of the human form. But as I earlier stated, human senses and hands hold untruths, and cannot represent a moment that is exact to what another person has experienced. The truth in the situation is that the artist existed, and created such a work, but to his imagination he takes the human model and changes it to what he deems to be perfection.
During the Renaissance period, art was fully devoted to the production of images pertaining to what the Catholic religion forced. The Popes would commission the greatest artists in Europe to create cathedrals of grandeur in order to show the little people Gods great power. The artists would create churches of gold containing gigantic monuments of saints and hero’s. Artists would also paint images of God himself, but this is impossible, since humans have no idea of God’s appearance, and this is especially because God is perfect, and we cannot conceive perfection due to our mortal being. Artists such as Michelangelo and Da Vinci were creating works that gave the illusion that they were made by God himself. The Catholic Church was able to manipulate the lower class people in Europe, by only teaching what they wanted the people to know about the Bible and other political affairs. This manipulation was easily performed due to the public being illiterate, and the church would use Bibles of foreign languages to ensure the people could not see their traitorous schemes. Art thus has functional value during the time of the Renaissance, but we see there is little truth in light of the false representation of higher things that man cannot know. We can also learn much from the advancement in art during this period. If you take a look at paintings created by Cimebue and Giotto, there seems to be a likeness dealing with perspective and realism, and the same can be said pertaining to the other painters of this period. Then there seems to be a drastic shift in the style of painting. Starting out as almost cardboard cutouts to three-dimensional masterpieces that seem to reach out and almost grab the viewer by the arm. The shift in art seemed to be of an observational difference, where artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo were bringing the studies of science into their materials. This progression gave the art world a chance to break beyond the boundaries of what only the church commissioned.
I feel that the observation of life is most important for an artist of handcrafts, especially with painting and drawing. It is impossible for a painter to know for example, a chair, because the chair was most likely not constructed by the artist himself. It is also impossible to know if the artist knew what kind of wood the chair was made of, or how old the tree was and where it came from. Even though the artist has all odds against him in truly knowing this chair, it is in his desire for him to produce an image, whether it is important or not. I am fascinated by the way things work, how they feel, where they come from, and how something will react if surrounding variables are changed. Although, according to Socrates, no man is wise because only God is wise, we still find it necessary to push forward and pursue knowledge and wisdom. Through art I have been able to find that wisdom is difficult to attain, and that I can never know anything about what I am trying to study. Even if I attempt to study myself, I still must look at myself through a physical and distrustful world, and this is especially pertaining to my fallible senses. Then when I wish to display what I have hitherto learned, the ideas will stream from my brain to the imperfect hands, which may be uncoordinated to what my brain wishes to portray. Everything I know about the world is thus untrue, and every word spoken has come from a fallible mouth, and received by a fallible ear, and continued down the line till I have finally reached the words of wisdom. The first five books of the Holy Bible, or the Torah, were dictated by God, and written on page by Moses. God is perfect, but how much truth can come from the hand of a man, and then most likely passed on from another man to another. Then the Bible has been translated to fit any language, and to also fit with the slang of the current cultures. How can all the true messages of God be exactly the same as the first time it was written down? If the distrustful hand of man has constructed the Bible to be questionable in truth, how can we trust the world of art, and is it possible to gain any knowledge from it?
Once the Church ended its conversions of underdeveloped societies, and the Reformists broke free of the Popes grip, Europe seemed to take a Liberal approach to how their world was going to be run. Thus, during the 19th and 20th centuries, people seemed to break free of the Catholic censorship, and gave new grounds to art. It seemed as if the artists were creating works pertaining to their own desires, and not for a purpose higher than their own. It was a new era of the individual, and all types of radical ideas seemed to change the world in a drastic way. Art was being used to visually display the deep emotions of a person. The Fauvists studied the effects of color, and certain hues and shades were used to explain emotions in a visual way. Surrealists brought the recently discovered subconscious mind (dreams) into their work, and the futurists wanted to destroy anything relating to the past. Before the 19th century, any of the ideas put forward by such artists would have them accused of heresy. Psychoanalysis wasn’t discovered till the early 1890’s, and ideas like subconscious desires or any other mentally disabling diseases were unknown. If something wasn’t perfect, and not the way God intended it to be, it was most likely considered wrong. With contemporary art comes problems, and conservative thinkers mainly cause these problems. As the way things are going, the Americans are in a mode of globalization. They are attacking countries halfway around the world, and forcing their democratic ways onto other cultures. People halfway around the world are also seeing the same things on television that I see too. And soon enough we will seemingly be one culture, one people, all connected by one leader. Good? Bad? I know what I think, but as truth stands, I could just be telling a lie. Most art is a display of a culture and what is happening during a person’s life. So, art is documentation. It is a proof of someone’s existence. We may never know whom, but someone created the piece of art. There could be reason for the art, and we might be able to know why it was created, but as I stated, there is no truth in art, and it is mainly symbols pertaining to another idea.
Art is parallel to poetry, but they never touch. Both forms of creativity use metaphor, whether visual or literary, and these are used to describe one moment in relation to another. Artists are able to censor their forbidden desires by using tools such as metaphor, but there is also imagery, symbolism, abstraction, etc. All of these devises are used to distort the original message and make it more difficult, and in some cases easier to understand. What artists attempt to do is make connections between symbols that eventually lead to a deeper meaning. This has been done since the early stages of the Renaissance, but it was never noticed until Freud began analyzing the reason for expression of repressed and subconscious desires. The only thing imagery and metaphor can create is a slight glimpse into a moment the artist may have experienced.
My arguments hitherto are of a skeptical nature, but I cannot comprehend any other way of looking at the world. It is impossible for me to assume that art teaches us anything, especially if it is difficult for me to find any truth buried within all the symbolism and history. The one thing I’ve learned about art as a viewer; is to never care about art that has no function. But when it is myself creating the art, I will always want people to truly understand the meaning and experience behind my creation, but they will never know. A story can be told with pictures, but the truth is in the eye of the beholder.