The art world is a vast stadium of ideas, avenues, ways and means, all of them with their own strengths and drawbacks. Ultimately, it’s up to the individual artist—you—to make these tools and moves your own. That’s why it’s helpful to start by exploring the work of other artists, learning from their successes and mistakes.
In this way, you will gain a sense of what’s possible, and then begin to see how to use these resources in your own unique voice. This is how you learn the language of art, and eventually, master it.
Art has the ability to teach us more about a culture, a place, or an event than any other medium can. It can take complex, complicated topics and present them in a simple form that could be understood by almost anyone. This makes it a great equalizer for the masses, as everyone can benefit from it regardless of educational or financial background.
Historically, art has been defined by its capacity for representation, or mimesis. For example, Plato developed the idea of a work of art as a kind of copying or imitation. This definition has served its purpose well for many centuries, but by the end of the eighteenth century, intellectual experimentation had started to push back against traditional concepts of what art is.
For example, in the Romantic movement, artwork began to be defined by its emotional content and how it evoked feelings in the viewer. This approach continues to be a major factor in how art is valued, though it may be hard to quantify.
Another common approach to understanding and discussing art is to focus on compositional elements, such as balance, proportion and contrast. To get the most out of a piece of art, you should try to understand how these features affect its overall meaning. To do this, you can examine things like how contrasting colors or textures are used in the piece, or how your eye is drawn through the work. You can also notice if the work has any proportional relationships, such as large versus small shapes or jagged versus curved lines.
It is also useful to consider the purpose of a work of art. While most art is purely decorative and serves no functional purpose, anthropologists know that some pieces serve ritualistic or symbolic functions in the culture from which they originated. This function is usually not motivated, but rather the result of generations of change and of a cosmological relationship within that culture.
For instance, the Momuments Men were a team of museum directors, curators and art historians who risked their lives to travel behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany, cataloging the art that Adolf Hitler planned to destroy, because he saw it as “degenerate.” These works were considered to be important by their own cultural merit, but they were also meant to symbolize something important to Germany’s national identity. Likewise, the works of many modern American artists are intended to stand for some concept, idea or feeling that will help define America’s culture.