Exploring the wide, wide world of art

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Composite painting on Reviving the Spirit of Nationalism by a student artist. 

Student artists at work. Inter-school painting competition, University of Santo Tomas, Manila 2013

Art spans through epochs and ages - from the early Homo sapiens and possibly, the Neanderthals, to Van Gogh and Picasso - it is universal, timeless, yet evolving;

Art in fossils, art in totem poles, pyramids and ziggurats, etched on rocks, cast in metals – they are emissaries of history, and part of history themselves that speak of culture.

Prehistoric paintings in the caves of Lascaux, France, usher the birth of human art, the dawn of man's consciousness of the world outside the confines of darkness;

Stone age man expressing his genius in inventions, his triumphs over beasts, his skills yet his reverence to a god - the primordial art of living towards the making of a society;

The Renaissance bloomed in the fifteenth century through the Greco-Roman model, surviving the Dark Ages and imbibing part of it, that make culture varied and rich;

We are astonished by the art of Michelangelo, Raphael, and Da Vinci, as they were astonished by the art of lost civilizations - Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greco-Roman;

The latter could have learned their art from prototype cultures, and from cultures on the other side of the globe – the Aztecs, Chinese, Indians, prior to their colonization.

Exploration brought two worlds together, the East and West - the latter as masters of peaceful cultures, under a prototype globalization version of a master-slave relationship;

Art flourished and the lethargic schools of Classicism and Romanticism opened up; movements followed one after another – Realism to Impressionism to Expressionism;

On to Abstract Art which dominates today in various ultra-modern schools like surrealism, yet art continues to cling to its roots, making alive its ethnic and indigenous origin;

Modern tools, electronics and computers, have brought in a new face of art in all fields, challenging the true meaning of fine art, of music conservatory, of classics;

Art in advertisement, art in high rise, art in cinema, art in malls, art in athletics, fashion, body language, cars, drones, war, etc. – make us wonder what is art and what is not;

Crisis in art to fundamentalists and critics on their pedestals, revolution to avant-garde, futuristic in the computer, money in business, boom in media and communication art;

Art, where art thou heading for? When millions have not enough food, education, homes, in the midst of affluence, yet not enough sanity, not enough hope to live for?

Revolution in art in reverse: the bypassed involved, the gifted challenged, the uninvolved touched in their lives – for art’s meaning is to live with meaning. ~

 

Top, Futurism: Death by Genetic Engineering by AVR; Stop Nuclear Development, Love Life by a 12 year old summer art workshop participant.