Have you ever looked a picture and felt some inexplicable emotion well up inside you? Certain paintings elicit feelings that cannot be put into words, conjuring emotions that give us a better understanding of the painting and a healthy insight into our own lives. The feeling produced by art is created ripple moving outward, reaching our friends and loved ones, spreading in like waves along a shore.
Introduction to the Language of Art
Every art form relies on some basic principles in order to be able to make those looking at or listening to the piece understand exactly what is being conveyed. If a viewer cannot understand what type of art they are viewing, they will have a hard time understanding the emotions that the artist was trying to convey. Different artists specialize in different art forms, so it is important that every artist understands and follows standard guidelines.
Benefits of art for empathy
One of the most basic needs is to feel empathy towards others. There are two main types of empathy: cognitive and affective/emotional. Cognitive empathy is what we call the ability to understand how people feel. Art helps with communication. Instead of talking about ideas that can mean different things, an artist might make something that has a direct meaning. Artists have the ability to make conceptual art, which makes it easier for other people to understand the artist’s message. Painting and doodling are examples of art that can help one express feelings in small parts of their life.
Predominant types of art
There are many different types of art with many mediums and techniques. The predominant types are visual arts, theatrical arts, creative writing, music, performance arts, dance and film. There are two predominant types of art: genre and historical. Genre art is characterized by clear, identifiable styles that usually represent a particular theme or social group, like realism and pop art. Historical art examines something in its early stages of development or during specific time periods. Since prehistoric times, people have appreciated the beauty of different aspects of nature. They made paintings on cave walls and ornaments for their homes. All good artists need is practice to develop their skills and some simple tools such as brushes and paint. Although art may look easy, it actually has a language all its own with familiar terms like compositional principles, geometric shapes, property values, contours and tonal values used by those who are willing to learn the language.
How does art features intention
In art, intentions are shown through the techniques and materials used. These can be symbolic or explicit. Certain characteristics of a painting, such as its style or type, will indicate what the artist intended to say. Art has the power to make people feel things. It can unearth deep emotion and feelings; sometimes good, bad, or both. Art is more than a show of an idea. Certain artists’ style, technique, intention, or medium are what allow the art to have meaning.
How art connects us
Art has been expressing ourselves in various ways and across all boundaries for centuries. Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, Aristotelianism and Western psychology to name a few share the idea that art is the bridge between the individual and external reality. By representing something socially accepted as truth on paper or canvas, artists are able to put their own thoughts, feelings and hallucinations at bay, leaving them with a mixture of identities. What paintings might mean cannot be explained by science or economics. Stories in art communicate with many forms of social referencing and through a combination of visual, interpretive, and material cues. An artist’s body of work is often richer and more layered than what the individual parts might show on their own. Modern art has served as an important cultural catalyst for national identity.
Romanticism, Realism, Symbolism, Abstraction
The romantic artists attempted to create an ideal as opposed to reality. They made their subject matter beautiful and the often over-ornate style that has come to be synonymous with the aesthetic movement. The Realist school of thought panned the Romanticism, preferring instead to focus on creating a realistic interpretation of humans in society. “Poverty,” “childhood,” “old age,” Etc. were all topics they wrote about. While Romanticism is often defined as an emotional outlook, what is usually meant by a Romantic view on art is one of personal feelings or interpretations of art. Romanticism involved feelings that were “tender, overcome with deep feeling” and sought to establish an individualistic style. Also called “private” or “idiosyncratic” points of view, personal perspectives are beyond external capture in the work of Romantic artists like William Blake and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The Language of Art is a mixture of romanticism, realism, symbolism, and abstraction. When trying to understand art as a whole, it can be hard to distinguish which of these most affected the artist. No one view is correct in understanding the language of art.
Art has been a primary part of human life since the beginning of time. Artists have used art to convey their thoughts and feelings with the use of mediums like the paint brush or a knife. The goal, in their efforts to create a product that speaks to multiple senses is called Realism: the attempt to represent things as they actually exist on earth using realistic techniques.
Artists often use symbolism throughout their work. Symbolism can be difficult to learn and focused understanding on a particular topic can help one learn more about it. Symbols in some pieces of artwork may have different meaning than those in others. Today’s symbols can have meaning different from what they did 100 years ago and this can provide new subject matter for artists, which expands the horizons of paintings, sculptures, or music compositions.
The use of abstraction is a tool that helps artists think critically about the work they are creating. One way abstraction can help is by allowing artists to focus on some parts of their work and ignore others. Abstract art centers around techniques such as shapes and lines, which replace face features and other details normally found in paintings. Through abstraction, more than one idea can be represented at a time, it’s also a great exercise for training your cognitive skills.
Conclusion
If a painting has great movement, it implies the work captures that vitality of everyday life and how we live. Such enhancement implicates the audience and builds a sense of belonging. Like art itself, our lives always are moving in many ways we find both captivating and chaotic. In conclusion we can clearly see that the language of art is not any single vocabulary but many words. There are many different objects, processes and techniques that art references which depend on what it is trying to say.
