{"id":68594,"date":"2022-09-19T08:19:42","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T08:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/?p=68594"},"modified":"2022-09-19T08:19:42","modified_gmt":"2022-09-19T08:19:42","slug":"a-brief-history-of-the-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/blog\/a-brief-history-of-the-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brief History of the Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe width=\"100%\" height=300vh src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vbXJChdQ6xA?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe>This blog is about the history of art and how it relates to its soul. I will cover many topics, but my main interests are on the evolution of art, self-expression, identity and style in art.<\/p>\n<p>The notion that art has a soul is not new. It has been discussed by many noted thinkers. I&#8217;m not going to go over this history here though, I&#8217;d rather focus on what I have to say about it.<\/p>\n<p>The author explores the history of art and it&#8217;s relationship with the soul. He also examines art in its various forms, from architecture to sculpture and more. The author aims to give readers a deeper understanding of how art affects their soul, and how this has changed throughout history.<\/p>\n<p>Author: John C. Reilly<\/p>\n<p>What if I told you that the world of art is in a state of limbo because of a discovery made over 200 years ago by an amateur scientist? It sounds crazy, I know. But stick with me here.<\/p>\n<p>I am no art critic, but I have been interested in its history since studying art history at university. The thing that fascinates me most is how certain themes and styles keep reoccurring throughout the centuries, or even millennia. Why is that? What do they represent? And why are they so important to humans?<\/p>\n<p>This blog will be my attempt to answer these questions. I hope you enjoy it!<\/p>\n<p>As for the name of this blog, what does &#8220;soul&#8221; have to do with art? Well, let&#8217;s take a look at some examples:<\/p>\n<p>* Michelangelo&#8217;s Sistine Chapel ceiling is often referred to as &#8220;the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel&#8221; or &#8220;the Sistine Chapel ceiling,&#8221; but it is officially named &#8220;The Creation of Adam&#8221; (1508-1512). This is not just because it was the first painting on the ceiling; it&#8217;s also because Michelangelo considered it to be his masterpiece, and he described it as his own soul put into canvas. The notion of God breathing life into Adam was inspired<\/p>\n<p>Aesthetica Magazine calls my art &#8220;Moebius Strip-like.&#8221; I&#8217;m flattered, but a Moebius strip has only one surface. My art is better described as &#8220;Moebius Strip-like&#8221; if it&#8217;s described at all.<\/p>\n<p>Art is about soul, not about surfaces. You can&#8217;t see a soul directly; you know it by its fruits.<\/p>\n<p>The thing that irritates me about the way people discuss art is that they talk about the surface instead of the inside. They don&#8217;t say things like: &#8220;This sculpture is a solid mass of lead.&#8221; They say things like: &#8220;I like this sculpture because it evokes the infinite.&#8221; What they mean is: &#8220;I like this sculpture because I feel superior to it.&#8221; If you want to be informed about art, stop listening to what people say and start paying attention to how they look when they&#8217;re talking about it.<\/p>\n<p>What people call soul in art is really just something they&#8217;re projecting onto the work. All artists are familiar with this phenomenon; it&#8217;s harder to notice in yourself than in others. We do art because we want to express ourselves and we want other people to be able to see it. But all we can express through our work are thoughts that other people have<\/p>\n<p>Art is a thing to be discussed and discovered by the viewer, not dictated by the artist.<\/p>\n<p>The communication of the meaning, the soul of art is an act between the work of art and its audience.<\/p>\n<p>Art is not the physical object that we see before us &#8211; it is not the paint on canvas, or the clay in a statue, or the sounds of music, or the images in a video. It is what resides within these material things. It is what they are and how they affect us.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all in your mind.<\/p>\n<p>The art of the last century has been built on the belief that there is no inherent meaning in visual form, that all meaning is imposed by the viewer, and that therefore any response to a work of art is as valid as any other. The result has been various kinds and degrees of confusion, which have been analyzed endlessly. But this wholesale rejection of inherent meaning does not come from nowhere; it comes from a profound misunderstanding of what most traditional art was trying to do.<\/p>\n<p>The root of this misunderstanding is the conception of visual form as an arbitrary system created by artists in order to represent or symbolize ideas or emotions. This conception goes back to the very beginnings of formalist theory, to the cubists and their progenitors in modernism, who were influenced by the success of 19th century sciences in explaining natural phenomena through mathematical models. This in turn led to a confusion between science and mathematics on one hand and art on the other: since both are concerned with systems, one might reason, then both must be concerned with systems of representation.<\/p>\n<p>It follows that in order for art to succeed as a system of representation it must be based on a clear set of rules. The goal is clarity \u2014 clarity such as we find in geometry not because it represents some higher truth,<iframe width=\"100%\"\" height=300vh src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y58jT-YgdP0?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This blog is about the history of art and how it relates to its soul. I will cover many topics, but my main interests are on the evolution of art, self-expression, identity and style in art. The notion that art has a soul is not new. It has been discussed by many noted thinkers. I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68596,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68594\/revisions\/68596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}