Dada

Marcel Duchamp's "The Fountain"(1917) opens the flood gate to the question "what is art" The interesting predicament of this question is "what is art" in comparison to what? "The Fountain" was a way of forcing people to answer that question. His intention was to break the convention of what art should or could be. Even to this day art is and aways will be ever changing, there will always be new artist's that push the limits of what we find to be "art."But we shouldn't try to find the one answer to the question, we should take each piece for itself and look at it in its own context and time. The intention of the artist should become as important as the style he/she expresses it in. Duchamp's intent of bring an object of low esteem to a high pedestal in itself a statement of the appreciation of function as much as its form. It is a beautiful in its function to dispose of human waste as efficiently and cleanly as possible, as much of its beauty in shape and line.

German Romantic Landscape

In Friedrich's "Monk By The Sea" (1820) we see a lone monk looking out to sea. His size is very important to the piece (he is tiny in comparison to the world around him). The emphasis of this piece is to give the viewer an awaking to his or her sizes in relation to the world they live in. If you really think about it people of today don't really understand it either, we do the same things everyday (almost) go to the grocery, hang with friends, etc. By doing this we make a micro world for ourselves in which we lose understanding of the macro world. In effect we have made our world smaller and ourselves larger. What is happening in Africa is not as important as the subjective day struggles of your or my existence. The harsh reality is that we find what is in front of us or is happening to us immediately to be of more important than something we may never experience. We go through life seeing it through our own two eyes and no-one else's, and in that sense what we see becomes more important than what someone else sees, thus causing confrontation between people. And as the painting is trying to show we are only a speck in this world with little individual influence.

Dada

"Unland" By Doris Salcedo, is a representation or should I say an homage to the struggles of Colombian people, and their challenges of political unrest. She created these pieces in 1998, and without interpretation most viewers would never understand the meaning or inspiration behind the piece. As the progression through the history of art the background necessary to understand the art has shifted, in the past a background in the understanding and knowledge of religion is key. Through time the key has changed from the knowledge of society to being able to read works. But now in much more modern art the knowledge needed to fully understand the works of Doris Salcedo or Mark Rothko is almost impossible to understand without written information about or by the artist themselves. Now I posses a question for all to answer... Is it enough to look at a work and take what it gives you or...should you be knowledgeable in the history behind it and the artists intention for the piece?

Romanticism

"Scenes from the Massacre at Chios" By Eugene Delacroix, is an uninspiring interpretation of a great and brutal massacre. The image of tragic death and murder is not inspiring to begin with, but usually at least in some way the the image would give a sense of hope. During this time (1822-1824) an image of such matter with no underling message of hope or celibration was never done. Now in the 21st century we see images of death and war, but we see such matters in small doses (one or two images on the news) or years later in a book of the topic. The manipulation and censorship of the media in times of war,crisis or political unrest is extraordinary, there is so little of the conflicts ( here and abroad) being shown to the public. Now the masses are in the dark when it comes to the full facts of most situation that affect them day to day.