Essay on What is Art?

Submitted By gaby3871
Words: 1440
Pages: 6

What is art?

One of the big questions in the world, one that will keep you wondering and thinking the question some may ask is what is Art? There’s No true answer to what art is, it’s more of an opinion and is different in everyone’s perspective. Art is a way of skill, anything that comes through somebody’s mind. Art makes this world what it is to this day, and because of it the world also thinks much differently. It’s not just a way to communicate, although it’s that too. Art helps the mind with imagination and creativity. There are elements that go into art like different types of lines, shapes, forms and Techniques such as crosshatching and stippling. There are also many, many colors, whether their primary colors like reds, yellows and blues or Secondary colors like oranges, greens and purples. By just mixing two of those colors you can make a new one. Once an artist or anybody has felt that he or she has completed work they feel unity between themselves and the work. Art has evolved throughout the world’s existence, It all with pre-historic art. Pre-historic art was all art produced in preliterate, beginning somewhere in very late geological history. An example of prehistoric art is cave paintings, which were used to worship animals and help hunt, and was one of the earliest arts made. The first cave paintings were found in 1870 in Spain. The colors in this era were made out of earth hues. There was also the Venus of Wilendorf also known as the “goddess of fertility”. It was considered to be 25,000 years old and suggested fertility and plentiful food. Continuing on came Mesopotamian art. This type of art grew up in the ancient civilizations that grew up in the area around the Tigris, Euphrates River and Iraq. Over the 4,000 years that Mesopotamian art existed it reveals a tradition that appears decorative and style. They used rare stones and a variety of metals as well as shells to make very fine sculptures. Mesopotamian art lasted from 7,0o0 to 3,500 B.C. Egyptian art was developed by the civilization in the lower Nile valley from 5,000 B.C to 300 AD. This type of art was expressed in paintings & sculptures and both were highly stylized and symbolic. They drew the human body very different from how it realistically is. They drew from the chest to waist facing forward and the lower body sideways along with the head. They also did not exaggerate the bodies, and did not want to change and drew as if they had a graph paper behind. Aegean art refers to art that was created in the Grecian lands surrounding, and the islands within, the Aegean Sea included in the category Aegean art is Mycenaean art, famous for its gold masks, war faring imagery and sturdy architecture consisting of citadels on hills with walls up to 20 feet thick and tunnels into the bedrock. The term "Aegean Art" is thought of as contrived among many art historians because it includes the widely varying art of very different cultures that happened to be in the same area around the same period. Then came Greek art, which were obsessed with the human body, they drew the human body too perfect as if they were gods. The artists wanted the paintings as if they were to come alive. Greeks tried to make more realistic bodies and went to making god like bodies. With Roman art they usually borrowed or copied Greek art. The Romans were very decorative and were précised on the details, an example of their very detailed work id the 16th Chapel in Italy. There’s also Early Christian art, the Christians were less detailed and painted on catacombs from the year 100 to about the year 500. Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people (not necessarily Muslims) who lived within the territory that was inhabited by or ruled by culturally Islamic populations. The huge field of Islamic architecture is the subject of a separate article, leaving fields as varied as calligraphy, painting, glass, ceramics, and textiles, among others.