The De-romanticization of being an Artist
Art has been a resource with multiple uses since the beginning of human experience. From conveying cultural context, religious value, societal value, and even providing a form of escapism, art has become a crucial industry for artist’s to make their livelihood. However, with the pressure to monetize hobbies and dependence on that monetization, art has potentially lost the intention it once had. This article will investigate how the pressure of the socio economic climate affects artists’ intent of their work.
While the intentions of prehistoric art are unclear, humans of that time were attempting to communicate through the use of pictures and symbols, drawing onto walls with ochre and other earth pigment (Morriss-Kay, 2009). Since then, art has been used to imitate reality. Plato, while finding art useless, named this theory the mimetic theory (Sontag, 1966). The last several hundred thousand years society has built the structure of the art world as well as its utilizations. Religious value was brought about through artists’ expressions, showcasing the beauty believers saw through gold-foiled murals of religious figures like the Virgin Mary in Madonna. Another evolution of art was the purpose of providing cultural context. The African-American community during the Harlem Renaissance portrays this concisely. (Enger, 2017).
