What and How Can We Learn from the Ancient Art
It is both the best and the worst time of the contemporary art. On the one hand, there is a free environment in which new conceptions are allowed to grow, but on the other, the new conceptions seems to run out, when, for example, a urinal can also be counted as a kind of art.
Then where is the way out? Firstly man is supposed to know, that the development of art is not always the abandonment of the past. This is to say, when art come in a dilemma, then it is high time the artists reflected on themselves, and even further on the historical art, where the reasons can be found, why some things are permanent.
Evolution doesn’t indicate becoming better, and the permanent things will not evolve, which are displayed mostly in ancient Greek arts. The artists tried to reveal the ideal beauty, but the works were not only visually great but also ideologically. They collected the beauty that exists in all human beings to build the ideal models, like The Apollo Belvedere, where visitors are astonished to find how perfect a human can be, but they must remember, that Apollo isn’t human, instead a god. Apart from this sculpture, many other ancient Greek works represented the gods in the perfect human form. In addition to the visually perfectionism, there was something ideological behind them. The works show the gods or a scene that are from the old mythologies of ancient Greek, which are the core of their culture and also metaphor of the nature of human beings, the thinking of the fate and the conception of the whole world. Although the eternity can also be fund in the ancient Egyptian art, they have a little in common. The artists made their works in order to record, memory and most importantly, to reserve the life and energy of the royal families. Very obviously, this is the political thing. The democracy dominated the Greek, so the artists could use their own eyes to observe the nature and to express their own thoughts, while the system in Egypt was autocratic, so the artists there are more workers and they produced, following strict rules, which made their works more and more rigid. The two different regimes lead to the different kinds of “eternity”.
Although the ancient Greek arts appear to be old-fashioned, there are something that will remain alive forever——the freedom, the spirt of perfectionism and the belief of the whole nation, they are what makes us confused today. Our modern artists are also trying to find our “new mythologies”, many of such artists paint the figure of our era of consumption in a serious or traditional way. It is a sign that our idol hat changed, for instance, Dixie, Darling of the Midway by Peter Blake, where is a cartoon woman painted in the form of altarpiece like a medieval saint. There are also something just commercial, that aren’t worth mentioning. Is this the new core of the culture of our time, or nothing more than chaos, that we are losing the sprit? Apparently, the art hasn’t come to an end, instead, the contemporary artists have still heavy task to fulfil, that is, finding new guidance for art, which serves for our core of culture.
According to the theory, “paradigm shift”, of the american philosopher Thomas Samuel Kuhn, the development of science is divided into three stages: prescience, normal science and revolutionary science, between the last two stages is a breakthrough. Art is also a sort of science and follows the rule and now it needs the breakthrough——the new sprit to find instead of just something new to invent.
Then where is the way out? Firstly man is supposed to know, that the development of art is not always the abandonment of the past. This is to say, when art come in a dilemma, then it is high time the artists reflected on themselves, and even further on the historical art, where the reasons can be found, why some things are permanent.
Evolution doesn’t indicate becoming better, and the permanent things will not evolve, which are displayed mostly in ancient Greek arts. The artists tried to reveal the ideal beauty, but the works were not only visually great but also ideologically. They collected the beauty that exists in all human beings to build the ideal models, like The Apollo Belvedere, where visitors are astonished to find how perfect a human can be, but they must remember, that Apollo isn’t human, instead a god. Apart from this sculpture, many other ancient Greek works represented the gods in the perfect human form. In addition to the visually perfectionism, there was something ideological behind them. The works show the gods or a scene that are from the old mythologies of ancient Greek, which are the core of their culture and also metaphor of the nature of human beings, the thinking of the fate and the conception of the whole world. Although the eternity can also be fund in the ancient Egyptian art, they have a little in common. The artists made their works in order to record, memory and most importantly, to reserve the life and energy of the royal families. Very obviously, this is the political thing. The democracy dominated the Greek, so the artists could use their own eyes to observe the nature and to express their own thoughts, while the system in Egypt was autocratic, so the artists there are more workers and they produced, following strict rules, which made their works more and more rigid. The two different regimes lead to the different kinds of “eternity”.
Although the ancient Greek arts appear to be old-fashioned, there are something that will remain alive forever——the freedom, the spirt of perfectionism and the belief of the whole nation, they are what makes us confused today. Our modern artists are also trying to find our “new mythologies”, many of such artists paint the figure of our era of consumption in a serious or traditional way. It is a sign that our idol hat changed, for instance, Dixie, Darling of the Midway by Peter Blake, where is a cartoon woman painted in the form of altarpiece like a medieval saint. There are also something just commercial, that aren’t worth mentioning. Is this the new core of the culture of our time, or nothing more than chaos, that we are losing the sprit? Apparently, the art hasn’t come to an end, instead, the contemporary artists have still heavy task to fulfil, that is, finding new guidance for art, which serves for our core of culture.
According to the theory, “paradigm shift”, of the american philosopher Thomas Samuel Kuhn, the development of science is divided into three stages: prescience, normal science and revolutionary science, between the last two stages is a breakthrough. Art is also a sort of science and follows the rule and now it needs the breakthrough——the new sprit to find instead of just something new to invent.
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