

Since time immemorial, art, in the form of paintings, has proven significantly more to societies than the decoration it offers. Aside from anything else, art has always polarised opinion. Just think of Scream by Edvard Munch or Pablo Picasso’s Weeping Woman, and you will immediately understand the love/hate relationships most of us have with the framed medium.
These two modernist examples clearly reflect how the artist expresses themselves within a particular social environment, while, on the other hand, the diversity of individual responses to what they see is both cognitively and emotionally driven by the viewer’s own experiences, so will rarely be seen in exactly the same way by more than one person.
Considering that the hoi polloi in society have a loftier ‘ownership’ of critiquing art, they would probably come up with a definition of art as “reflecting the beauty of nature, and the flaws of mankind,” or something similarly lofty. Conveniently, however, those same connoisseurs turn a blind eye to the grittier side of our social norms and behaviours, popularised in recent years by street artists such as Banksy, preferring to stay with their vision of beauty as an illusion, with art always being beautiful but rarely reachable.
That unattainable beauty is reflected in art as far back as Michelangelo’s stunning Creation of Adam, the scientific yet enigmatic Leonardo da Vinci with his worldly Mona Lisa, the prolific Vincent van Gogh during the 15th century, Rafael’s almost photographic imagery 50 years later; the remarkably accurate Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt during the 17th century; JMW Turner’s landscapes and river scenes, and Monet’s flowers, all perpetuating what nature has given us to admire. While Edouard Manet’s Music in the Tuileries in 1862 was first reviled for its broadness of brushstroke and later lauded for its composition and bold approach.
Art today, say its advocates, is leaning towards being less universal while supposedly reflecting societies more accurately, having a role in shaping the future by making the wider population more aware of the diversity within them. The same way that Manet’s Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe, which scandalised Parisian society in 1863 with his image of a woman undressed and surrounded by fully clothed men, somewhat spat in the face of an artistic establishment that would previously go to extraordinary lengths to conceal or ‘shade’ the female form. He persevered through his Olympia two years later, pushing society’s boundaries.
An extraordinary contrast is the grittier art form represented by Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain, an image of a graffitied urinal, shocking in its bare boldness; Jackson Pollock’s 1952 abstract expressionist offering Number 11, a scattering of splatterings on a large canvas, its chaos supposed to represent the irrationalities of both war and peace in the post-WW2 era. Andy Warhol intrigued too with Campbell’s Soup Cans from 1964, a silk-screened image of rows of cans of soup. How ordinary!
Although informative, it is all only words, isn’t it? Words have significantly more value to society, greater resilience, through reaching more people with their messages. Further, being cultural, historical, linguistic, morphological, and intuitional, words, being adaptable and multi-functional, whether written, read, or spoken, have instant impact and offer immediate responses. They enable communication.
So, despite my affection for art, and my recognition of the talent required to produce even ‘bad’ artwork, I could never take it seriously enough to believe it reflects or shapes the future of society. In fact, I would go very much the other way and say that society of the day offers artistic opportunities. Art fills spaces as we seek the best, the ultimate, in what we like or appreciate.
My tastes, then, turn to LS Lowry’s Coming Home from the Mill, Jack Vettriano’s Singing Butler, and The Westoe Netty, a print by Robert Olley—ordinary and pleasant, with a dash of whimsy. What about you?
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