Traditional and Modern Art

In visual arts both the subject matter and the techniques form traditions extending sometimes through millennia, recording the human evolution and humanity in far more direct ways than, for instance, textual traditions can ever do. In short, visual arts open a rare window to the essence of humanity itself. Visual art is testing in a comprehensive manner the human capabilities to experience the world. Modern art has further opened up the whole definition of visual arts and freed even greater number of possibilities. Anything can be presented as visual art, if the audience is ready to accept it as art and “sees” it as art. I also discuss the basis of art as we inderstand it. Life imitates art and art imitates life. Which one is the copy then? The concept of mimêsis is one of the most frequently misunderstood concepts of classical Greek philosophy. In spite of breaks in tradition and misunderstandings, what is most important, is that in European art traditions the idea of liberal art as a means of expressing and shaping in a creative way ideas has kept alive and strives.

The Changing Role of Art and Interpretations of Art in Contemporary Societies

In this chapter the changing role of art and interpretations of art in contemporary societies are discussed. Visual art works are always open to a great diversity of possible interpretations, impressions and opinions. There are also vastly differing opinions and ideas about what art is or should be. What characterizes contemporary art is the idea that it is one of the areas freedom that allow and encourage rule-breaking and visions. In short, it is the refuge of imagination in a society that otherwise is built on modern science, logic and reflexivity. For some that freedom and imagination is too much: modern art may include elements of carnival madness, sophomoric humour, cheap publicity-seeking or hoax – in addition to great art providing deep experiences and/or thoughts to people who cherish the opportunity to feed their souls with art. Viewing art can be a deeply intimate individual process or a social statement, sometimes both of these. However, this book also offers consolation to all art lovers: art itself is globally in no danger of disappearing as a result of any political or commercial pressure.

Future of Visual Arts and Their Social Role

Here we contemplate the future and look also back to see where we have arrived. Art has responded to the ever-increasing presence of images available to people everywhere by maintaining its authenticity and originality. The proliferation of images in newspapers, magazines, books, posters and postcards has deeply influenced people and increased the number of images around them. Next the television, videos and movies introduced moving images and further accelerated this process. This whole phase has taken roughly two hundred years. More recently, the digitizing and Internet together have further made the spreading of images much easier and the quality of copying and receiving images gets all the time better. Meanwhile, the cost of reproducing images has drastically decreased. After this I will cover the present and future trends in art market and new ways of creating visual art and marketing it. There are some people who early on started to wonder whether authenticity really matters any more. My answer is that it matters more than ever and that art is still going strong.

Ideology, Artistic Impression, and Freedom of Expression

This chapter introduces the ideas of Louis Althusser on ideologies as social practices. All political ideas form ‘ideologies' and the well-known ideologies are something that can be openly stated, defined and argued. However, more often ideologies are part of social practices and in this case they may remain rather invisible to the very people who keep them alive. In other words, intersubjectivity and ideology are closely connected. What this means is that most of the time most of the people are blind to their own ideological thinking. It usually takes an outsider or a person with a different way of approaching things to see clearly the ideological basis of other peoples' ideas and actions. After ideology the discussion moves to different motions of freedom and what they mean for artistic expression.

Culture Wars

This chapter focuses on Culture Wars, which illustrate well the problematic relationship between visual art and politics in various parts of the world. Most societies have actually created very specific rules for artistic expression specifically protecting freedom of expression in art. However, in reality art is never free from ideological attacks and the easiest way to attack art without openly attacking also the freedom of expression is to argue that this particular type of objectionable art does not deserve to be called art. The mechanism in modern societies increasingly is that politicians target art without impunity. Their aim is to use art as an easy target and this way they can demonstrate to their supporters their strong moral convictions. For politicians whose supporters are assumed to share dislike of most types of contemporary art for reasons of doubting their ideological message, it is easy to argue that any piece of art is offensive. Of course, most pieces of art are always offensive to someone and if you really try you can easily find something to loathe in most everything in the world. In this chapter I cover contemporary Russian art, the art of President Trump and the South Korean exciting political art and art of politics. Finally I move to Nazis and art and various attempts in the world to control art through politics and other means.

Contested Ideas About Art, Culture, and Tradition

Modern art theories have only broadened our understanding what art can be and in this book I also introduce quite a few ideas to illustrate how contemporary art is being interpreted by such diverse groups as the art establishment, politicians and the general public. If the social critique or message conveyed by an art piece appears banal or too simple it changes into boring propaganda and can easily turn against the original political objectives. It is far better create art that defies definitions and continues to raise questions, art that remains interesting and will be interpreted and re-interpreted in markedly different ways. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong in enjoying aesthetic beauty of art when the art provides joy, happiness and good feelings. Next there is a discussion on John Dewey's idea of art being a window to another culture and to the minds of people and after that about the hermeneutics and interpretative approach of Hans-Georg Gadamer and what they tell about culture and the incomplete and prejudiced understanding of everyone.