My own favorite period for art is the early Renaissance, from about 1400 to 1550 or 1600. I like the paintings from that time, and I like most of the other arts from that time as well. But my favorite artist of all time is probably Leonardo da Vinci. He was great at everything: painting, sculpture, architecture, engineering and music. He’s also one of the most interesting people of all time. For example, he wasn’t much of a businessman and he preferred to live in comfortable poverty instead of being an employee. He also had some weird ideas about science and medicine. I think his ideas were wrong, although some of them weren’t easy to disprove in his day.
You could make a list of the best artists of all time and come up with someone very different from my list: maybe Michelangelo or Raphael or someone else from Italy; maybe El Greco or Rembrandt or Vermeer; maybe Edvard Munch or Picasso or Andy Warhol; maybe Wassily Kandinsky or Gustav Klimt; maybe Andy Goldsworthy or Olafur Eliasson; maybe someone else entirely. But if you look at any group of five people over a period as long as human history, you’ll find ten great artists
Art historians and critics often have defined the best art of all time according to their own personal preferences. It is a good idea to read these experts however you can. But it is an even better idea to come up with your own opinion on who is the best artist of all time.
It isn’t a terrible thing to be ignorant about art history as long as you are willing to admit that you are ignorant. Many people will tell you that you cannot appreciate art unless you study the artists’ lives and read about their thoughts on their work. Although it is a good idea to learn about the lives of artists, it is not necessary in order for you to develop an understanding of art.
Although many people think that learning about art history is important, art history classes are not comprehensive and well-rounded studies of art. That’s because there has never been one person who knew everything about every artist or piece of artwork in human history. There are many reasons why art history classes are sometimes very incomplete and superficial: funding, time limits, textbook editions, etc. Because of these reasons, taking college courses in art history may or may not help your development as an artist.
If you want to be a great artist one day, then it would be helpful for you to learn
There are many ways to define and rank the best artists of all time. Some of the most common include:
1. Greatest innovators
2. Greatest artists
3. Greatest artists who survived long enough to become famous
4. Greatest artists whose work would have been most appreciated in their own time
5. Greatest artists whose work would have been most appreciated today
6. Greatest artists whose work will be most appreciated tomorrow
7. Greatest artists who changed art in the direction I like best
8. Other
There are a few artists, like Shakespeare and Rembrandt, who are so good that we don’t usually bother to disagree with them. But most of the art we see around us is not so good. Even the paintings in the best galleries tend to be pretty bad.
But what is art? It is not a question you can hope to answer by saying it’s whatever your friends say it is; they may have been wrong before, and they will certainly be wrong again. And it would not be much help to say it’s whatever people agreed on yesterday; that would only justify the art of today, and yesterday’s winners were probably tomorrow’s losers.
What I think is that the best art of all time has been created when an artist finds a way to show us something about ourselves that we had not thought about before. When you look at a painting by Cezanne, or read a play by Shakespeare, you feel as if something inside you had just come into focus — as if things you never noticed before had now become obvious, though you did not know they were there before.
Perhaps this definition is too vague to be useful, but I think it helps explain why Shakespeare is considered better than Virginia Wolf, or Moby Dick better than Gulliver
Top 10 lists are always a bit of a problem. The books we read as children and the songs we first danced to have a disproportionate effect on our tastes because they are the ones we remember best, but they may not deserve that disproportionate effect.
In this list, I’ll try to take account of the unreliable nature of memory. Wherever possible, I’ve tried to include a wide range of artists. And for each entry, I’ve listed 10 other songs or books that almost made the cut. Of course, I’m sure you will find flaws with my own choices; that’s inevitable too. But with luck, your choices won’t be so different from mine that you will never want to explore any of these artists further. Here we go:
Art has always been a controversial subject. For example, many centuries ago Michelangelo was highly praised for his sculptures of David and Moses; however, some thought that these sculptures were too realistic. Some people even thought that they were ugly, since they displayed the genitalia of David and Moses.
The art critic of today is different from the art critic of past centuries. Art critics used to be respected as supposed experts on art; but now artists are often considered professionals in the field, while art critics are amateurs.
Therefore, it is important to remember that while there are some general principles that guide artists, art is in essence a very subjective thing. For example, the artist John Singer Sargent was a contemporary of the impressionist painter Claude Monet. Monet’s work consisted of paintings with total color saturation and no outlines or outlines made with bits of color. However, Sargent’s work consisted of portraits with extensive outlines and few colors.
Tone:matter-of-fact
Art is subjective. There is no objective reason why Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” is considered a great painting rather than a mediocre one. But from the standpoint of history, it is clearly one of the most important paintings ever made.
The question here is not whether Van Gogh was a great artist; that is settled. The question is, what makes him so important? What makes any work of art important?
The answer depends ultimately on human nature; without an audience, there can be no art, and audiences respond to art for reasons that are hard to quantify. But it also depends on the choices the artist makes. An artist who understands his audience, and who understands human nature generally and his own nature specifically, will make better decisions about how to organize his talent and how to express himself than an artist who does not.
There are two obvious ways in which an artist can make better decisions: he can study other artists’ work, and he can study science. There are also more subtle ways: through introspection — thinking about oneself — and through experience, especially experience dealing with other people.