ART BASICS: What Kind of Art Is It?
What Kind of Art Is It? Sacred or Secular, Realistic or Representational, Abstract, Non-Representational
What Kind of Art Is It?
Art as belief has two concepts devoted to its description, "sacred art" and "secular art".Sacred art is directly related to the spiritual world, e.g., religions. Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" exemplifies the notion of "sacred art".
Secular art is devoted to the secular world as seen in Boticelli's painting, Primavera and in the Mt. Rushmore sculpture in South Dakota. Secular art was essentially an ougrowth of the Classical Greek period and the beginning of what came to be known as "Humanism". In effect "Humanism" is the celebration of the individual.
Although many styles of art are determined by religion, culture, time and place, essentially there are only three basic art categories, "representational", "non-representational", and "abstract".
1. Realistic or Representational Art
Representational art is a kind of art that recreates images and objects from the world we know with a minimal change. They are rendered, painted, sculpted and/or depicted to look just like their subjects. Realism takes place in art when artists dealing with identical subject matter create their individual interpretations, each of which is a new reality that the artist finds in the subject.
2. Abstract Art
Abstract art is an art form that is more concerned with the artist's interpretation of subjects rather than the duplication of subjects. It alters the view of the real world retaining only its essence. The artist picks, chooses, distorts and may even reject parts of the visual image to create new forms or express feelings that are derived from the visual image.
Non-representational art depicts no recognizable object or clear image of the real world. Representational art and abstract art are subject-oriented art while non-representational art is non-subject oriented. This art form is unique to the twentieth century.ART BASICS, What kind of art is it?
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