Art
has long been a favorite topic for debate within a society.
Questions such as “What is art?” and “Is this a work of art?”
have been around for millennia. The purpose of art is to entertain,
and in some cases, to educate. As a form of entertainment
and escape, art does in some ways must keep up with science
and technology, but in most aspects the true value of art
lies in its ability to free the mind from the fast pace of
a modern high-tech society.
In the first place, one needs
to simply look at the most valuable art in the world to
see that its main function does not lie merely in keeping
up with technology. Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” and “Last Supper”
were painted around five hundred years ago, but they are
still cited as some of the best examples of “true” art in
the world and are visited by hundreds of thousands of people
every year. Michelangelo’s sculpture “David”, as well as
his incredible paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
at the Vatican, were also produced around five hundred years
ago, but are still revered as some of the absolute pinnacles
of artistic achievement. Although technology has changed
incredibly in the last half millennium, these enduring works
of art still capture the spirit and imagination of millions
of people worldwide.
Of course, it follows that as
technology has advanced, new art forms have been developed
as the ability to express oneself has found new outlets
for creativity. Michelangelo and da Vinci could never have
imagined having the ability to create works of art in the
mediums of television or computer imagery, for example.
Modern day avant-garde artists use video, computers, lasers
and other high technology to create works of art, while
more traditional artists still use the traditional methods
of paint, canvas and paintbrush or stone and chisel. It
is not the function of art to keep up with science and technology,
rather the facility of art to do so that is important. The
main purpose of art is still to allow the viewer to escape
from what science and technology has wrought upon us.
A further example of the escapism
quality that is inherent in art can be found in the art
of making a movie. Although some so-called “art purists”
might object to calling most of today’s cinematic productions
a form of art, there is no denying that there is an artistry
involved in the making of at least some of today’s movies.
With this art form more so than any other, art does the
fine balancing act of keeping pace with science and technology
while simultaneously fulfilling its main function - that
of entertaining the masses of society. Moviegoers do not
pay out relatively large sums of money just to see the state
of the art technology of the latest movies; they go to the
theatres expecting to be entertained. Proof of this fact
can be found in the colossal box office failures of some
of the most technologically advanced movies that nevertheless
lack entertainment value due to the lack of a good story.
If it were purely science and technology that audiences
wanted to see, they would pay half the price and go to a
planetarium, for example.
Finally, art, science and technology
can complement each other in a multitude of different ways,
such as the display of famous works of art on the Internet
for all to see. But the main function of art is to allow
for an escape from the drudgery of day-to-day life that
has been created by the combined forces of science and technology.
(611
words)
