 | |
| When early man stenciled an impression of his outstretched hand on the | |
world around him. The story of art has been largely the story of man's
continuing search for meaningful marks-for the shapes, sounds, words,
pictures, and dance movements that can most eloquently express his
experiences of the inner and outer worlds, and so enlarge and perpetuate them.
Most of us, living as we do in science-driven communities, seem to want more or less precise definitions of anything that we are thinking about. Great thinkers have tried to produce such a definition of art across history Each has contributed something to our understanding, but none has said the last word. Yes, the only thing we could be sure of is that artists and working people think about and try to define art for so long as they exist.
Though we can not offer the entire definition of art, we can begin to understand how important it is to imagine a world of our lives without it: no singing or dancing, no plays or stories or operas, no films, no sculptures, no architecture, no paintings or drawings, and no styles or decorations for everyday life.
You will get a glimpse of the scale of this blog series from that list. Of course, we can not trace the creation of each of those various forms of art in the space of a single blog -that is something we leave to later blogs. But here we are trying to lay the groundwork by looking at the creative urges that underlie all artistic practice.
We demonstrate that when art began, its functions were related to magic and ritual and that these functions still are with us somehow. First, we see man as an artist, and how he can train his urge to create. We are researching a number of ways for trained artists to work. We will also look at the three main roles artists can play in different kinds of communities: folk artist's role in primitive, unsophisticated societies, the role of the so-called artist in highly developed cultures, and of the artist who works in the field of mass communication.
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon