Art

Where would the world be without art? There would be less avenues for expression than there is currently and there would be a lacking of many different forms of entertainment and experience.

The word ‘art’ encompasses a whole world of different forms. Music, film, television, comedy, literature and paintings are all part of the greater artistic world. However when we think of art the most obvious thing that comes to mind is paintings, sculptures and other kinds of visual representations that might appear at art galleries across the UK. Art has given people a lot of pleasure over the years and has appeared in various movements that have defined certain periods of our history.

Take surrealism as an art form, characterised by the work of Salvador Dali and others, who created works of art that represented fantasy worlds with impossible images invaded our senses. Paintings such as “The Persistence of Memory” and “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” are engraved in our cultures, with melting clocks and animals with absurdly large limbs. In the art world anything is possible, as the real world can often collide with the fantasy world. But then, artists have also been known to move into other fields such as film, with Dali himself directing some surrealist movies and shocking audiences. Then there are other well known artists who are invited to work for Hollywood, providing designs for its well known creations. These people include H. R. Giger, the Swiss artist who designed the monster from the “Alien” movies.

But art is not just about surrealism and depicting a world that cannot be true. Art has been around for millennia, allowing us to capture images of times gone by way before the camera became capable of doing the same thing. It means we can view paintings of beautiful landscapes, capturing a specific moment that has now passed as well as paintings of cityscapes and civilisations, giving us a glimpse at what life was like in centuries passed.

Paintings have captured famous battles, the faces of famous Kings and Queens and shown us what techniques might have been prevalent at the time. Without art there would be very little for us to view and study and we would be unable to visually piece together much of what makes us human.