People Web International

By Manashimaya Duttagupta

What is ART ?  If we go for the general definition of art, it is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings and photography. We can also put it in a more simple explanation as something which gives our eyes pleasure, something decorative, beautiful whether by creation of human beings or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect our senses and emotions. For much of its history, philosophy was not merely a theoretical discipline but a way of life, an "art of living”, considering the fact that how we live life like a big canvas having colors of essence.  This way we, our life and the world of art move on. Our world is in true sense an Art in itself. The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures. The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old.

They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment which shows animal forms like horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth, or humans often hunting. There are examples of cave paintings all over the world-in France, India, Spain, Portugal, China, Australia etc. There are many common themes throughout many places where paintings have been found; implying that the imagined creations have similarity of purpose and value. Various assumption have been made as to the meaning of the paintings had, to the people who made them. Prehistoric men painted animals to "catch" their soul or after having created them in the painting it would become easier for them to hunt them more easily. The paintings became the expression of how they viewed their natural surroundings. Some of these are found in India. Examples are Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, rock painting, Stone Age India.

The economic success of a country is deeply intertwined with its ‘capabilities’ for carrying out certain innovation of technologies that can compete at the state-of-art level in the world market. Therefore we have art since the world came into being. Humans found art everywhere at every stage of their entity. Since then pre historic, historic, medieval art, renaissance, impressionism and expressionism, neo classicism, romanticism, romanticism to modern art, modern art and contemporary art, showed its movement or style with a specific common philosophy or goal.

These art movements were followed by the artists for some restricted period of time. Then came the concept of post modernism in visual arts refers to that period where modernism leaves off. The term refers to visual arts, novel ideas and architecture and sometimes literature. In music it is more common to speak about genres and styles.

The present art scenario presents a series of various art forms, installation, abstract, realistic, semi-realistic, figurative, symbolist etc.. The expressions of the artists are shown in these forms.

The installation is a new born term yet it may cover a huge range of things. Installation art can be either temporary or permanent. Artists have constructed Installation art works  in exhibition spaces and galleries, as well as public- and private spaces. The genre incorporates a very varied range of everyday and natural materials, as well as new media such as sound, video, performance, internet and the immersive virtual reality.  Installation art came into prominence in the year 1970.

With the new technology over the years, artists are more able to explore outside of the boundaries which they had never been able to do in the past.. The media used are more experimental and bold; they are also usually cross media and may involve sensors, which plays on the reaction to the audiences' movement when looking at the installations. By using virtual Reality as a medium, immersive virtual reality art is probably the most deeply interactive form of art. At the turn of a new century, there is a trend of interactive installations using digital, video, film, sound and sculpture. The artists have created a new virtual world on their own  through different social and art related interactive sites where they participate in various discussions using their creative images through photographs, videos etc.

Visual artists of present arena are successful in their own sphere. They have a vision to follow and are engaging themselves into creation and expression of their thoughts across the boundaries and connecting within themselves towards some new ART movement.

-by Manashimaya Duttagupta, PWI Reporter National Capital Territory Delhi
19 June 2011
Contact: nct.delhi@peoplewebinternational.com