As humans develop and grow, they have always found a need to creatively represent their thoughts and feelings. Art is the way they have done this since prehistoric times. Its functions have been numerous: aesthetic, expressive, communicative, educational and therapeutic. It can bring a sense of pleasure, evoke feelings such as love and joy, fright or fear, sadness and sorrow, and even inspire courage and power. It can also be used as a tool to challenge beliefs, promote social change and raise awareness of important issues.
As a result, art is a reflection of the society in which it is created. As such, it can reveal a lot about the history of a people and their beliefs. It is therefore not surprising that many teachers use art to teach about history. Whether it is the history of cave paintings, or the art of Leonardo DaVinci, it allows students to see how art has evolved over time.
It’s important to understand how much the interpretation of art can vary between individuals. This is why it’s a good idea to begin with a class discussion about the meaning of art. You can then use guided questions and prompts to help the class take a deeper look at an artwork and its components. This will allow the students to form their own conclusions without relying on any preconceived ideas.
What makes a work of art “art” is its ability to convey an emotion to a viewer. Art can be the expression of a man’s state of mind: the feeling of devotion to God and fate expressed in a drama, the desire for voluptuousness in a painting, the courage displayed in a painting, the happiness evoked by music or a joke, the merriment transmitted by a comedy, the peace brought by a landscape, the quietness induced by a lullaby, or the admiration evoked by a beautiful arabesque.
The study of art enables us to understand the way in which a culture works: what is valued, how people interact with one another, and how religion is portrayed. It can reveal a great deal about the historical background of a civilization and its evolution, and it is an essential part of understanding our world.
While people can lead art far astray from its path of expressing a human state of mind, it is essential to preserve its function of communicating emotions to the public. Without this, a civilization would stagnate. As science and technology progress, and the Earth gets smaller and smaller, art is one of the few things that reminds us that we are not alone in this small corner of the universe. It is what keeps the human spirit alive.