the concept of art
Art can be defined in many ways and has been used to document civilizations for as long as life has gone on. From the history of the cave paintings to how art is looked at today in galleries, shows and museums, art has often been used to describe historical events and the way that human civilization works. Art is a key way that we as a society describe many accounts of history. Art takes the world and molds it to its liking, from the the early caveman paintings to the Italian renaissance, from the revolutionary anthems of the 18th century to the protest songs of the 1970s and from the earliest written words to modern novels. And while history books and accounts of warfare do tell a story of history, art is the true history of mankind because of the way that it provides a unique and colorful look at the world at the time that the art was created.
Art and beauty have often been used to give another perspective on life or to document historical events. In the novel Beauty by Roger Scruton, he defines art as “the beautiful is that from which nothing can be taken away and to which nothing can be added but for the worse.” While it is a loose definition of beauty, it gives a clear indication of how beauty is defined and how art can be viewed as perfect. There are some paintings that have this type of beauty in their frames and I believe the works of William Hogarth are in that category. William Hogarth was an English artist, painter and social critic and Hogarth painted many paintings during his lifetime. His work was often based on his observations on life in the 18th century. His most famous paintings were his series Modern Moral Subjects. In these series of paintings, Hogarth explains his thoughts and observations. The series I would like to highlight is the first series, called A Harlot's Progress. The six paintings in this series detail a woman who slowly goes into prostitution and dies. Over the course of the paintings, we see a woman slowly dying as she gets involved in prostitution and then dies of venereal disease. On the surface, the six paintings of the series could just be seen as a series of events that has a natural progression. as a woman slowly dies while living in London. However, what lies under the surface is something more honest and sinister. William Hogarth's way of satirizing modern life by way of his paintings is on full display, as Hogarth displays life as he saw it. He saw the messiness of life and he saw life as weird and meaningless, so his paintings reflected his criticisms of social norms of the day. His views on life and social norms are evident in his paintings. Hogarth wanted the people to see what he thought of them and how he saw modern life and the people inside it. Hogarth made people think about the world that they were living in. William Hogarth’s satirical paintings on modern life capture the weird awkwardness of human life in the 18th century and serve as a window into life at that time.
While paintings like Hogarth’s style are notable, it is composers like Franz Shubert that take human emotions and translate them into compositions. Schubert's compositions, like Trout Quient and Erlkonig, show the innermost thoughts of human beings. By attaching poetry to his compositions, he was able to create textures and radically innovate sounds. These sounds connect to the listener and that power is what drives his compositions. His most famous piece, known as Ave Maria, is a powerful piece of music that has been used in many houses of worship and cathedrals. While the song was not initially seen as a song of worship, it has been used as such ever since. The piece used radical musicianship to elevate and heighten the power of the song. The piece shows how art can show the history of mankind by combining radical musical ideas and powerful words that have stood the test of time. With his most famous piece Ave Maria, Franz Shubert is able to connect the concepts of worship and human experience with musical ideas that push how composers wrote music going forward.
As demonstrated in Schubert’s Ave Maria, art is able to connect to human existence and celebrate the joy of life. However, there is some art that celebrates the opposite of life itself, death. Death has often been a source of inspiration for many artists. It is the way that many artists are able to try to connect to the afterlife and all of its conventions. Artists write about death to understand their mortality. They explore human beings coming close to the afterlife and the mortality of it. These themes of death and the afterlife often have religious undertones and were often written by people with deep religious ties. Whether they were Priests or Bishops, poet often dealt with people facing death and what happens in the afterlife. An example of this type of art is the poem Death, be not proud by John Donne. John Donne was an English poet whose style of poetry was often celebrated by his peers. He was born to Roman Catholic parents, which was illegal to practice in England at the time. However, as he got older, he converted to Anglicanism, which was the official religion of England at the time. His work often deconstructed human emotions and put them into poetry form. He dealt with how human beings grieve and the concept of death and mortality. As his writing career grew, he started to implement more religious text into his writings. After converting to Anglicanism, he worked as a Priest and quickly became known for his sermons and his poems that detailed his religious beliefs. Donne wrote a series of poems he called Holy Sonnets, and Death be not proud is part of this series. In his poem Death be not proud, Donne confronts the concept of the afterlife and his thoughts on it as a Priest. In the poem, Donne does not think that death is truly as powerful as he is. He thinks that death is not scary, rather he thinks that souls live in the afterlife. He thinks in his poems that death does not have any power as an entity. He thinks that the souls of the afterlife will overpower death and that he will become meaningless. He explains this in the last line of his poem. “One short sleep past, we wake eternally and death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.” Donne’s style of poetry explains religion and the process of death. Donne describes the human experience of the afterlife. how humans of the day thought of the process of death. The way that Donne starts out is with the basic human assumptions about death and the afterlife, then he offers up his own perspective on the afterlife and how he thinks about death. The poem speaks to how humans see the afterlife at the time and provides a window into religious history in the 17th century. The influence that John Donne had on modern literature had a lasting impact on how people wrote about certain topics including death.
In summary, art has the power to convey every type of human emotion. However, art can twist these emotions and ideas and make them into unique ideas that make people think about how the world around them works. Whether people are painting about the corrupt nature of living in the big city, the power of a prayer and radical musical ideas, or how the concept of death does not scare a priest and how he thinks that death doesn’t have control over anyone, art is used to communicate certain feelings and ideas that have a lasting impact. These works provide a portrait into their time and are so important that people marvel over and think about them for decades and even centuries after their creation. While war, emperors and kings and political discussions can embody certain aspects of human history, art is able to understand the thoughts and feelings of those in war and in political discussion. In addition, art is able to convey the thoughts and feelings of the people, and the observations are not made by just emperors or kings. Rather, art celebrates human history for its ups and downs and art provides a window into history for all to view, read and hear.
Scruton, Roger. Beauty. New York: Oxford, 2009.
Roberts, Maddy Shaw, and Classic FM. “What Are the Lyrics to ‘Ave Maria’, and Who Wrote It?” Classic FM, June 15, 2023. https://www.classicfm.com/composers/schubert/ave-maria-schubert-lyrics/.
Donne, John. “Holy Sonnets: Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed March 26, 2024. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44107/holy-sonnets-death-be-not-proud.
I Declare that this essay is my sole and unaided work, that no Artificial Intelligence tools have been used in creating my text, and that all sources cited have been correctly referenced.
Nick Tobin
