Many qualities that we now associate with art—originality, individual expression, something to contemplate rather than use—began to take shape only about 1500 and flourished in the 1700s. Before that time objects of great beauty and symbolic significance generally served purposes other than artistic self-expression. Art was more closely woven into the fabric of society, and artists were workers, although people admired them for a skill that at times seemed almost magical.
1. Antiquity: Skill or Technique
In ancient Greece, the word techne is the closest equivalent to art. Techne, which means work or technical skill, can be applied to the fashioning of any sort of object. But the Greeks had a special appreciation of mimesis (the imitation of reality) in painting and of especially pleasing proportions in sculpture and architecture.
The ancient Romans used the word ars, but ars still referred to a technique or a method of working, not to the expressive, creative activities that we now associate with art. Roman writer Pliny the Elder provides most of our knowledge about artists from the classical (ancient Greek and Roman) period. He wrote about the arts of painting and sculpture in the section on metallurgy in his Natural History. Although Pliny praises the skills of particular painters and sculptors, he does not single out painting or sculpture as being better than pottery, metalwork, or other crafts.
2.The Middle Ages: Craftsmanship
During the Middle Ages (about 350 to 1450), Christianity dominated Western culture. Thus the main purpose of the visual arts was to teach people, many of whom could not read, about religion. Art taught by means of delight, drawing people’s attention and helping them understand the spiritual through fascinating forms (whether delicately refined saints or monstrous devils), ornately carved and painted decoration, precious materials (including gold, ivory, and gems), and colored light pouring forth from stained glass.
No particular form of art was considered superior during the Middle Ages. High value was placed on small-scale luxury objects such as illuminated manuscripts, jewelry, and metal objects used in church services. The great medieval cathedrals—buildings that required the skills of hundreds of craftsmen—became the pride of entire cities. Wealthy people decorated their homes with huge tapestries that told stories from mythology. Even clothing could be elaborately decorated and express a person’s status and moral views.
Craftsmen, carefully trained in specialized medieval workshops, made the objects we now call art. Our word masterpiece comes from this medieval workshop tradition. The term refers to an object made by a craftsman at the end of his training to show he had acquired the skills to be called a master. During the Middle Ages a masterpiece could be a statue, a stained glass window, or a pair of shoes.
3. The Renaissance: Genius and Design
The importance of skill and craftsmanship continued well into the Renaissance, a period of artistic and literary revival that began in the 1400s. During the Renaissance, the visual arts were often associated with other trades based upon the type of material they used. For example, in the guilds (trade associations) of 15th-century Italy painters were grouped with doctors because both used chemicals, and sculptors who worked in bronze were grouped with makers of armor. However, the position of artists began to change in the 15th century. Painters and sculptors associated informally with poets, who occupied a higher social status because poetry had long been considered a higher art. Books were written to explain the theory of art and architecture, and artists claimed that they were inspired geniuses and not merely workers.
During the 16th century, Italian theorists began to group architecture, painting, and sculpture as the arts of disegno (“design”)—that is, as creative activities that required an artist to visualize an idea and to transfer this idea to a drawing. (The Italian word disegno means both design and drawing.) Italian Renaissance writers also regarded narrative painting as more valuable than other kinds of painting, such as portraiture or landscape. Narrative painting told a story—mythological, historical, or religious—and thus could teach morals just as literature could. This type of painting, called istoria in Italian or history painting in English, was considered the highest form of painting until the late 19th century.
4. The 17th to 19th Century: The Fine Arts
By the 17th century, artists across Europe were seeking more creative freedom. They viewed the workshops of the Middle Ages and Renaissance as restrictive. Some artists gained freedom by working at the courts of monarchs and the nobility, while others made art to sell directly to individual collectors. Such freedom could mean a loss of artistic quality, however. As a result, art academies became increasingly important as a way to enter into the profession without conforming to guild regulations.
Academies emphasized ideas, particularly ideas that connected the visual arts to the sciences or to literature, fields that enjoyed much higher status than the visual arts. At the same time, the academies wanted to separate themselves from the workshops, where sign painting and figure painting were seen as two variations on the same craft. The Académie des Beaux-Arts (Academy of Fine Arts), founded in 1648 in Paris, France, especially emphasized this distinction; it gave the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture the name beaux-arts, meaning “fine arts.”
5. The 19th Century: Self-Expression
The French Academy of Fine Arts enjoyed special favors from the French government, and because of this connection it became part of the establishment (dominant institutions). During the 19th century artists in France fought against these institutions. In the early 19th century artists of the romantic movement (Romanticism), such as Eugène Delacroix, emphasized passionate expression. They often chose subjects that criticized the government, although their method of painting generally followed academic principles of composition and technique.
At mid-century Gustave Courbet and other French artists promoted their individuality: They not only chose subjects that the government might see as offensive, but also used techniques and compositions that went against academic teaching. Starting in the 1860s Édouard Manet and the painters who became known as impressionists (see Impressionism) broke away from the Academy and established alternatives to government-sponsored exhibitions and competitions. These alternatives eventually evolved into the modern commercial gallery system in which artists provide works to dealers who exhibit and sell the works to any buyer who can afford them.
6.The 2oth and 21st Century: New Media, New Art Forms
In the 20th and 21st centuries many trends have developed, including some that seek to destroy our definitions of art. Artists of the dada movement, which flourished in the early 20th century, created works and sponsored events that pointed out the absurdity of all definitions. One of the most famous dada works was exhibited in 1917 by French-born artist Marcel Duchamp: a urinal turned on its back, titled “Fountain,” and signed with a fictitious name (R. Mutt) that plays on the urinal manufacturer’s name (J. R. Mott) rather than Duchamp’s own name. Pop artists revived the dada spirit during the 1960s, with Jasper Johns’s painted flags and Andy Warhol’s painted soup can labels.
Contemporary artists, aware of earlier traditions, can choose to work in traditional media (including painting, sculpture, printmaking, and now photography), combine media (collage and assemblage), or avoid the traditional categories entirely. For example, some artists create so-called environments that we can walk around or through. Others, such as Bulgarian-born Christo and American Robert Smithson, have rearranged the natural landscape in ways that cannot really be called architecture, landscape architecture, or sculpture. Art critics have coined the terms land art and earthworks for such endeavors. Still other artists have focused attention on the monetary value we give to what we call art, by creating works that cannot be sold, as some conceptual artists did in the last decades of the 20th century (see Conceptual Art). Artists today can ignore the line that the academies drew to separate fine art from craft, or they can affirm essential differences between one art form and another according to their beliefs.
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