What is the definition of Art in Western world?

western art

Art in Greece included any skill, whether it was a practical benefit and benefit, or only aesthetic pleasure, without distinction between the artist and the maker, or between art and craftsmanship. Lloyd used to call a doctor, artist, poet, and shipbuilder a literal word or a maker because all of them provide a benefit and contribute to making life better.

Professor Tatarkiewicz at the University of Warsaw says that the Greeks confused handicrafts with fine fine art because they believed that the work done by a photographer or an example was not different in essence from that of a carpenter.

 In Western thought, the word art used to refer to various human activities and sciences, and not only to fine arts. The word art was also used for whatever industries, so sculpture, poetry, singing, and music were equal in value to carpentry, blacksmithing, and surgery, and thus poetry was a workmanship like other industries.

However, some philosophers who distinguished between industrial arts and fine arts appeared in Greece, such as Plato. He was the first philosopher to theoretically establish topics of art and beauty. Plato sees real art as a work that is far from the daily physical life, which in turn moves away from the influence of the senses and perceptual perception.

 Therefore, he saw that music achieves good and beauty due to its distancing from the physical reality, and its effect on the human soul by giving it balance.

Plato attacked the representational poetry and described it as a naive simulation of the tangible, as it expresses the deficiencies, the substance, and it is related to the sensory reality because it is not possible to express it without the presence of sensory tools.

 As for epic, lyrical and educational poetry, I consider it a sincere type of art, and it expresses the values ​​of good and right in society as it praises heroes, inculcates the values ​​of good, and participates in the education and counseling process.

 Plato also criticized the deception of the senses through sculpture and photography, and fought against that, demanding an art whose ultimate goal is to preserve the correct dimensions, proportions and ideal geometric proportions. Imaging living creatures.

Early Artists The oldest works of art known were statues made of bone and wood, dating back to 25,000 BC, the most famous of which is the statue of Willendorf Venus in English: Venus of Willendorf) found in Austria, which depicts a semi-naked woman believed to be the god of fertility.

 Beautiful drawings dating back to 15,000-20,000 years ago were also found, depicting deer, horses, and bison bulls, and it is believed that these animals are sacred and that protected peoples in the past, or that they protected hunters and gave them great power to control prey. The Egyptians also used wall paintings to decorate the tombs of mummies, and they depicted scenes of bliss in the afterlife.

Artists used to create things in which they honored and sanctified the dead; Where they formed vessels to offer sacrifices to the souls of their dead and carved monuments to commemorate their remembrance, and Nazca artists in South America made ceramic drums and rang them in their songs and dances.

 Several frescoes have been discovered in the Roman city of Pompeii. Early Christian artists also drew sacred images of Christian saints, which they believed helped them communicate with the Lord. The ancient Romans and Greeks also made artworks in which they depicted human bodies, and they asked athletes to stand before them to draw them because of their graceful and striking bodies.