The history of art can be traced back to cave paintings of about 15000 BC.
The nature of paintings changed little until around 1450 AD, when the Renaissance brought-about naturalistic styles and formal rules of composition, such as perspective and proportion.
Following the Renaissance, new styles emerged every 50 to 100 years, but nothing significantly changed.
In 1874, Impressionism abandoned the evolved traditional compositions in favour of a more casual and less contrived arrangement of objects within a picture. Impressionism was nevertheless still concerned with the representation of the real world through paint. by the turn of the century, the Impressionist movement had all but ceased.
Impressionism spawned Post Impressionism. Post-Impressionism was simultaneously an extension and rejection of Impressionism. While Impressionism had remained faithful to nature, Post Impressionism favoured brighter and more unnatural colours, and an elimination of concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and colour in favour of an emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content. In was, in some ways, a return to cave painting. the Post-Impressionistic movement similarly lasted little beyond the turn of the century, but had a far-reaching impact on art.
In the early part of the 19th century, various forms of Abstractionism emerged. Abstract artist departed further from realistic representations through techniques such as shifting the point of view, exaggeration, simplification, etc. the Dada movement was one form of Abstractionism.
The Dada movement
In 1916, the Dada movement was formed amidst despair and revulsion arising from the horrors of World War I. Dada art was intentionally anti-aesthetic, and sought to reject all rules and conventions. Many Dada artists considered their work to be anti-art, and to have the purpose of enraging their audiences. the single most influential Dada artist was arguably Marcel Duchamp.
Conceptual Art springs from Duchamp’s Fountain
As a young boy, Duchamp aspired to become a conventional artist, and took classes in academic drawing. He worked in the styles of the time (Post Impressionism, Cubism, etc), but failed to achieve recognition, until 1917, when his notorious ‘Fountain’ changed the face of art.
Fountain was a signed urinal. Duchamp claimed it to be a work of art that he had created, because; he chose it, he gave it a name, he placed it in a different context, and created a new thought for that object.
At first Fountain was reviled: in time it became glorified
Duchamp was an art anarchist, and his aim was to damage the art establishment. I believe his fountain was plainly taking the p. Unfortunately the perception of art transformed to embrace Duchamp’s hoax, and allowed him to achieve his goal: anti-art.
We now reason that anything can be art, which is no different to saying that everything is anything. 90 years later, our art galleries, art awards, and media coverage are all full of fountains, and the objective of our most notorious present day artists still appears to be enraging their audiences. Modern art has become a very weary joke.
In December 2004, Duchamp’s Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 selected British art world professionals. the Independent noted in a February 2008 article that with this single work, Duchamp invented conceptual art and severed forever the traditional link between art and merit.
Therein lies the problem; conceptual art should not render all other points of view invalid, but it appears be the yardstick by which all art is now measured. we are encouraged to think of art as coming from the imagination, being an expression of our inner-self, and a laudation of the supremacy of man. we are discouraged from thinking of art as simply pretty, a celebration of nature, and a product of physical skill.
As a professional portrait artist, I aspire to keep alive the traditional standards of natural colours, perspective, proportion, etc. the act of creation is subordinate to the output. My purpose is to copy from life, paint something pretty (delight rather than shock), and make no political statement.
On the Duchamp scale, my work has no merit; indeed, it probably doesn’t even qualify as art today.
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