本帖最后由 红绡 于 2010-7-10 02:40 编辑
ISSUE 131
131. "The arts (painting, music, literature, etc.) reveal the otherwise hidden ideas and impulses of a society."
分类:艺术
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Actually, I concede that the arts would exposit social hidden ideas and impulses as one of the most significant actions. Nevertheless, sometimes arts are created just for perform individuality or vagarious inspiration of artists without aiming at revealing society’s ideas or impulses.
Turning first to the effect showing society’s uncovering ideas or impulses, it still rings true today just as it did in the past. In period of renaissance from 15th to 17th century, artists or scholars committed themselves to rediscovery of classical literature and art in order to find something new in old things. In the Renaissance, the unique talents and potential of the individual became significant. The concept of personal fame was much more highly developed than during the Middle Ages with breaking authority position of Vatican. Renaissance artists, valuing glory and renown in the world, signed their works, such as Shakespeare who was the greatest English writer appraised human’s greatness in his work named Hamlet and Giannozzo as a humanist of Italy denounced the Pope by praising human outstanding. The works produced by these great artists exposed the main idea of the society in the times. Apart from this, we can see many vivid examples such as modernism developing in 19th century. Among the period, Claude Monet as the prominent representative of painters of impressionism broke traditional styles and created one new world by a new painting technique. In his work named Saint-Zalar Station, he expressed people’s new life style with free arrangement, so in this sense Monet had connected with the epoch closely. There are endless examples of instances. As a philosopher once commented artists (and I paraphrase) “Artists must predict, it does not mean, they have to prognosticate future, but he would rather make audience unhappy but to uncover the secrets of the audience’s heart truthfully.” “Arts is a medicine of society in order to cure the most severe mental sickness——depravity of consciousness.” also said by the philosopher.
However, sometimes, artistic creation is only an expression style of individual feeling of artists which comes from draw of some special inspiration. For example, Van Gogh created many immortal works with penetrating consciousness on colors. He once said that painting is not describing objectives as the original state, but is drawn according to the painter’s feeling about the object. So we can see, some of arts are not revelation of society’s ideas or impulses, but refection of the creator’s true heart.
Moreover, arts produced by artists are either revelation of social hidden ideas or impulses, or expression of their own thought. Actually, these two aims cannot be separated. Because in many time, artist idea is an epitome of a society’s hidden idea. Such as Dada and Surrealism, they materialize new treasonous ideological trend laughing at rationality. Obviously, in this case, we cannot make distinctions clear.
In conclusion, arts can reveal the society’s hidden ideas and impulses no matter mainstream or non-mainstream. Although sometimes the works express one individual spirit and feeling of the artist, the main responsibility of arts is to call a spade a spade to reveal some social thought. |