Custom essays on What is visual art and what role does it play in present day society?
// August 12th, 2012 // No Comments » // Free essays
The era of the ideological struggle between the democratic and communist blocs, which peaked in the mid-1970s, affected the development of art making the visual art subject to the ideological struggle. As a result, such new movements as social realism persisted in the communist bloc, whereas artists working in democratic countries carried on experimenting and focused on the commercialization of the visual art. As a result, such artists as Andy Warhol gave rise to the pop art which was primary concerned with material benefits of art being oriented on the mass audience.
Nevertheless, some specialists, for instance George Dickie (1988), still attempt to evaluate the visual art from the perspective of various art theories. In fact, George Dickie stresses the aesthetic value of art distinguishing it from pop culture oriented on the mass audience (1988). Therefore, he has a different view on the visual art compared to the view of Danto. Dickie develops the idea of the domination of the trend of the visual art as the unique artistic form, which preserves great aesthetic value and which is not always understandable for the mass audience. As a result, he writes about the existence of the art for the elite that can understand and appreciate the visual art (Dickie, 1988). In such a way, the concept of the art for the art’s sake arises.
Many specialists and artists stand on the ground that the modern art, the art of the 20th century, tends to immaterialism. In this respect, it is possible to refer to Yves Klein who attempted to explain the evolution of the 20th century art and laid emphasis on the shift from realism, which was typical for the middle and late 19th century to immaterialism of the 20th century (Bonesteel, 2000). He argued that the art of the 20th century grew more and more immaterial, since artists tended to experiments. These experiments resulted in the wider use of abstraction and stimulated the emergence of such movements as impressionism, surrealism, cubism and others, among which many were really distant ideologically, technically and stylistically from traditional realistic art. In fact, in the 20th century visual, realism was a kind of conservative art movement which had scarce resources to convey the artist’s ideas to the mass audience. Instead, new forms of art were welcomed. (more…)




