New Art: the destruction of beauty

Just a warning this is kinda long and boring there are going to be some people who really don't care about this subject and wished they'd spent more time doing something other that read this short essay type thing I wrote. I am not making any judgements on any art form, I'm just writing a few observations.

There are different styles and forms within art and they are not necessarily good or bad they just present different unique challenges. And as time goes on styles fall in and out of favor by people later in history. Like the Pre-Raphael's who by the name you could assume they were before Raphael but as times changed a very old form or style fell back into favor and they were (despite their name) after Raphael. Also as time goes by new styles and processes are invented that base themselves somehow on what has come before but do something relatively new and creative or at least popular. These new forms become popular because something within the form, a string of similarities or underlying attributes that as a whole is appealing. The individual works within the style will be as diverse as the creators each with their own expression of their world view. But as I said about styles within art they are not necessarily good or bad they just each have their own unique challenges and certain ideas do not lend themselves to different styles as easily as others. For example it would be harder to express ideas like humility through a booty shaking style of dance or to express more complicated ideas like the natural order of man through works similar to Jackson Pollock (He randomly splattered paint on canvas). I have noticed a new theme within art as of late that has probibly never been as prevalent within art as it is today, destruction. Within the last few years of art history destruction has become a more popular theme within art. This is exemplified in the works of graffiti, body piercing and tattoo (also quite blatantly at the burning man festival). I am not saying that all these diverse works all have the same message but there is a limitation within the form that will only allow one piece of art to exist by the destruction or alteration of annother valuable object. Most often with a focus more on the perminance of the alteration or distruction. Themes of destruction have existed within sculpture, painting, and other forms in the past but it has not taken on a popular form like this before. Even through the act of sculpting a "distructive" subject matter there would still be an element of creation whereby an object was produced and nothing was really destroyed. Now, however new forms have emerged and became popular that have within it's structure destruction.

Good Publicity?

The Old Art

"The expression of creative skill through a visual medium such as painting or sculpture. The product of such a process; paintings, drawings, and sculpture collectively." - Art as defined in the Oxford English dictionary.

When "Art" first began people wrote on walls in an imitation of nature. As time went on it was the job of most artists to skillfully recreate the beauty of nature using their creativity in the selection of subject matter and the placement of that subject matter. Later there was more of a focus on the medium and style in which the subject matter was placed. It moved from what a photograph for the purpose of documentation does into a new creation by the artist. These new creations reflected the artists opinions, ideals, thoughts their whole world view. Even through the neglect of conveying a message, an artist will still say there is nothing worthy enough to say.

As much fun as it is to give an over simplified, opinionated, narrow view of the whole history of art let's bring it back to one of the first creations, one of the first "art". Genesis 1:26 "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness'". Art is the creation of something. To me it testifies the truth of the verse (Genesis 1:26) everytime an artist does a self portrait. We are God's creation crafted in his image and because we are crafted in his image we do some of the same things. When we create sometimes, it seems natural that we make things after our own image. When a famous painter paints she/he doesn't need to sign his/her work because you know who painted it. Something of the artist is within the style the artist puts a bit of themselves in thier work and they create after thier own image. Look at the work of any artist and we get a glimpse of that person. We don't see the entirety of that person but we do see a part, as discussed earlier thier opinions, ideals, emotions, desires, thoughts, experience and world view.