Art, we’ve all heard about it, right? I sure hope so. Well how has it changed over the years?
This is a hard question, partially because art has existed for millenia, and partially because I have to fit this answer in a few paragraphs.
The beginning
Art is very old, about 2 million years old to be exact. The first signs of art are ANCIENT and lie in Africa. The first recognized signs of “artistic behavior” were human body decoration, like skin coloring with ochre and the use of beads; they may have even had functional origins other than decoration. The earliest known use of ochre was 164 000 BP in a South African coastal site, Pinnacle Point where a total of 57 pigments were found. A minimum of 10 of the pigments were ground or scraped. There is a great possibility that these pigments were used for the body coloring, hence why I’m including this. When art was first created, it wasn’t really anything other than just art. It didn’t really have any other functional uses.
The Middle
We are now venturing a couple hundred years later, about the 1900’s, not the B.C.E but still not the present either. In the 1900’s cubism and expressionism were more and more popular. In case no one knows what cubism is, it is a movement of art in which simple geometric shapes were used. Kind of like a painting, except that instead of non-geometric shapes, everything was a square, rectangle and simple shapes. If you have heard of Pablo Picaso, then well done! You know the name of one of the most well known artists in cubism. Expressionism is a style of art in which the artist wants there to be an emotional component, not just impressions of the external world. Artists that used expressionism wanted viewers to have an emotional connection to their paintings, they wanted to make the viewers feel emotion when looking at their paintings. Some very well known paintings used expressionism, such as “The Scream” by Edvard Munch, and “The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh.
The End (not really)
After reading about art from ochre and cubism, you must be wondering; what are artists doing now!? As it turns out, this question is really hard to answer. Art has come such a long way that there is no one or two ways to define art in the 21st century. Art styles can range from digital art, to pop art, to minimalism and everything in between! There is no one way to make art, and there are no bad ways either! There are so many different ways to express yourself, too many to count. I hope this article can help you realize the importance of art, and its ability to change, throughout the years. So go, grab a paintbrush, pencil, pen, and just… create.