Art is a broad spectrum of human endeavors involving artistic creativity to express intellectual ability, beauty, emotion, physical power, or purely aesthetic sense. It has been said, “Art is not a form of communication, but a form of self-expression,” and, “Art is not a product of the brain, but a product of the heart.” This view is quite controversial, and at times the definition of art gets blurred. This article will give you an overview of the history of art as it relates to today. In modern times art forms include painting, sculpture, motion pictures, sound, and computer animation. Modern Art has been defined by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger as a process of becoming aware of the ‘merely actual’.
The idea behind art is beauty; a certain aesthetic quality, psychological quality or emotional feeling associated with the object of art. Beauty is determined by humans through their personal experiences. They are motivated to seek beauty in all its forms and will even go as far as to define it in terms of physical and psychological traits. Aesthetics involve the subjective experience of beauty, an emotional valuation of the object based on personal understanding of its form and composition. The beauty of art therefore, depends on the human ability to experience beauty and, as Heidegger pointed out, the subjective experience of being and becoming.
According to the British philosopher John Locke art is only the product of the human condition, which consists of five distinct stages: instinct, intellectual, human, conversational, and reflective. Locke maintains that each of these five stages helps to explain the key terms associated with the art work including the nature of the visual mediums used, the emotions evoked, and the aesthetic qualities of the textiles used. Locke argues that each of these key terms helps us to understand the essence of the visual art. For instance, while some paintings may be merely a reflection of the colors of the environment, others paintings would illustrate the unique human condition of each artist.
According to the British philosopher James Renwick the primary purpose of art is to enhance our experience of life. According to Renwick beauty is primarily a matter of the desire of a man to achieve an aesthetic quality in his works. Renwick goes as far as to say that to a man’s mind, beauty is the only thing that gives pleasure. In his theory, an artwork has greater aesthetic value if it satisfies the desire of the person who is viewing it. He further goes on to state that the only way to attain beauty is through the controlled cultivation of a proper aesthetic judgment or evaluation.
According to Christopher Alexander, the key points on which an artwork is evaluated are its form, its content, and its medium. Alexander believes that art has an aesthetic dimension because artworks relate to human emotion through its composition and its medium. The form of the art can be considered its structure because it determines its general form and composition. The content of the art can be thought of as its message, because the message of the art is related to the message of the creator. And the medium is its channel because it enables the audience to receive and comprehend the message of the art.
In the modern age, the importance of the traditional problems of art is being challenged by the presence of new artists whose works challenge some of the more established views on art. This new generation of artists has produced some of the most innovative and aesthetically appealing works in history. The key points of the debate on art have shifted due to the creativity of these new artists and the responses of those traditional problems that artists had to overcome in order to move ahead.