Paper on Importance of Art Essays - Articles, Arts, Culture

Griggs Edward Humanities 004 June 12, 2019 ART (Humanities Paper #2) Both art and society have come a long way from how things used to be. Society has become more accepting, critical, and appreciative of art. I believe this is the result of the cultural and societal changes art has been directly responsible for. Art has different significance to people depending on their values, weather it'd be religious, political, or socially historic meaning. Today in this day and age we face a problem of how art is valued. Capitalism has had a significant impact on art and its creators. Money and society for the longest time has been at the forefront of new ideologies and what we can consider calling "accepted art." Furthermore, we need to question and become critical of what is "art" is placed in museums, and how we go about doing it, for future generations to learn about. Take a trip to any contemporary art gallery/exhibition in the world and you might be shocked but probably unlikely you will be shocked. What will you see? You will see flashy, vivid, BIG, and visually enticing art. Images, video, photographs, and appropriated pop culture images. What you will rarely find is a thorough discussion of what is being presented. This is part of the unique phenomenon of contemporary art. The art and presentation of the art have merged into a nebulous space that resists clarity of some sort of explanation and understanding. The reason for this lack is in relation to the very ideas behind contemporary art, but as the role of a museum is to clarify and educate, it is even more crucial that museums and galleries are very careful in how they present art in a way that interrogates and examines what is being produced. Art is becoming saturated and perverted by new occurring ideologies stemming from different cultures and facets of society. Ideologies are not bad per say, the negative part is how art is being affected by it. What criteria are we going off of in order to deem certain art, "accepted art?" According to ideology, such exceptions would be so-called great' works because it is through our highest ideals that ideology ties us to the values of the existing social relations. We are in a time where social, political, and cultural movements are forcing art to move with these changes. I believe it is imperative we focus on art in its purest organic form itself, rather than always try implementing meaning to it, or force the idea of a certain ideology onto it. On the contrary, art that remains aloof from the material world (of politics, the military etc) is far more functional because it shows us who we ideally are, not what we actually do. This is the role of ideology. It is by over-shooting reality and representing our very highest ideals that ideology manages to serve those in power. There are those in society which describe this glorification of ideologies as, false consciousness' is that it secures the existing social relations in processes of socialization and social reproduction. But it achieves this by promoting fine feelings and deeply held beliefs. Art is at its most ideological, then, not when it is politically instrumentalized but when it is autonomous, presenting an image of ourselves as cultivated, disinterested and high-minded. The last 50 years have been crucial to art. Contributions made to the study of art and creation of art have had significant impacts on the world in the last 50 years. Every form of art has grown and evolved into what we have today. We can thank the Feminist and Civil Rights movements for making our art world massively more inclusive. The dematerialization of the object of art and its expansion into idea or phenomenon have made it possible for a text, an action or an environment to be understood as art and for Modernist realism to continue by other means. Art is in the 60's influenced the end of wars and violence, triggered social movements and brought people together in harmony. Artists like Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol challenged the societal norms of what can be considered or called art. Musicians such as Bob Dylan