The Future of Art

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the history of art from the Renaissance period through to post-modernism in an attempt to determine the future of art. The paper contends that changes in artistic style, subject, composition, technique, and movement are mainly a result of changes in the social and economic environment in which the artist lives.

From the Paper:

"The Renaissance heralded in an entirely new tradition of art form during the 14th and 15th centuries, with a wide variety of painters, poets, writers and architects that literally and figuratively saw the world in a different light from the dark and dismal Middle Ages. Humanism developed in Italy in the field of literature, once again honoring the Greek and Latin classics for their scholarship and moral ethics. The humanists emphasized an enormous confidence in the power of reason as a source to understand human nature and its place in the world's order (Art: A World History, 215). The Reformation, a religious revolution with an emphasis on individual faith, was promoted by individuals or "protestors" such as Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin and John Knox. Alarmed at the corruption of the Catholic Church, they wanted to return Christianity back to its earlier simplicity and biblical foundation."

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