Does Art Create History Or Does History Create Art

Hi Joanne -- good question. I think that history creates art, because so much of the time art is influenced by either current events, which is history in the making, or by the artist's own personal history or both. I guess art creates its own history, though -- and possibly could influence an individual's own personal history, like a particular song inspiring someone to do something or live some way or change something about themselves. What do you think?

I think some history would be unknown to most of those living after it if it weren't handed down by prose writing, poetry, song, theater, painting, sculpture, and on and on. I suppose it is something of a chicken and egg situation, if history is not just the occurrence of an event but the memory of it in hearts and minds.

I'm not sure what is meant by the question....but some random thoughts....

I've spent, off and on, the last couple weeks roaming on the net through various museums in the world. On many museum web pages, you can click on a particular period in time to see representations of what is in the museum.

Further to ossobuco's question on the chicken or the egg. The Renaissance produced magnificent works in all the arts - paintings, sculpture, literature, architecture, music. The early Islamic years produced all those and more. So do we know history through these works? Or do certain periods in history produce the giants who create them?

Have we, in this century, produced notable works? This is a question I have asked myself many times. I really don't think so, or at least not in any sizeable quantity. At first I think maybe it's because enough years have to pass before we recognize. But then I think, no, in all those ages they were not only aware of the art they were creating, but it was commissioned and recognized. And looked for. But then, of course, what is art?

Lord, Joane, it's a rainy night, and this just started me thinking. I was a fine arts student, but ended up more interested in writing. And going to a lot of ballet. Now maybe there's an art form that's been more highly developed. There's certainly been some greats in that field.

I cant believe guys sitting around saying "aint it great living in the Rennaissance ?"

Those folks, for example, Donatello and Brunelleschi going on down to Rome to look at ruins, helped make what happened centuries before continue in impact, not to mention be added to our textbooks centuries later.

Well, farmerman, of course not! They talked Italian. More like "ciao, ciao bambino," or "arrivaderci Roma."

Sitting around in a Renaissance surrounding ... well, since you find this ART not only in Italy ... .
However, it's not only an art but belongs to a time period as well (" Age of Reason").

history
Damn! I wish I had taken the moneker: Donatelo Nobody. Too late.
I've got a very subjective attitude toward art history. But I can't tell it now because it's too vulnerable, too counter-intuitive to risk putting out there without patching it up a bit. Hate being laughted at.

JD...I agree with LibertyD ...History comes first...but artists, as the
lightning rods of their times, may be the first to be AWARE of
breaking history and articulate it VISUALLY in a lasting form.....The great ones, of course, define it for posterity.........

Farmerman...I suspect the Renaissance guys sat around saying....
"Yikes, what was it like to live in the unenlightend early Medieval
times?"

art history
Here's my objection to art history. No, that's too hard, here is my reservation, as a painter, to the notion that because I paint within an historical context, my efforts are artistically meaningful or not depending on how they promote, retard, or are irrelevant to the movement of art history. My objection is to a kind of historicism in which history is treated as a real (actually a reified) phenonmenon, as opposed to a bunch of records and interpretations by (mostly) non-artists who, somehow serve to define us and our work. I would hate to think that in order to produce work that is worthwhile or worth seeing that I would have to generate it with someone's historical interpretation in mind. I hate to think that a Rauschenberg, Johns, Schnabel, Serra or Stella became famous because they sat down and studied art history and on the basis of their historical understanding decided to paint in a certain way JUST BECAUSE it could be interpreted as a "revolutionary" move in the historical stream. Ugh! A work of art must have a deeper personal basis for the artist than that. Each work must be more than a career move. That would be like the academic scholars who feel themselves compelled to research and write about problems of no intrinsic interest to them but do so only because they are what's "hot" at the moment. Of all activities, art should be permitted to be the least communal of all. It should be permitted--nay, encouraged--to follow its own demon/muse regardless of what art historians might say about its "significance." Its significance must reside in its intrinsic artistic qualities, not just its extrinsic role in "history". A work can be lousy but historically significant, but I'd prefer to see and produce a work that is artistically wonderful but historically insignificat.
See, I told it you it is vulnerable.

Yes, JL, thank you very much for such reasoned insight. Work must be based PRIMARILY on personal significance. Otherwise it is reduced to a formula designed only to please, achieve success or even gain attention in the marketplace (whatever market that might be). Then we lose and art loses. It's no longer art, but a sheep in wolf's clothing.

Secondly, somewhere recently I saw the artist described as a seer
or oracle....I guess that contradicts my last posting that history creates art.....

art history
Thanks, Shepaints. I've no objection to historiography as such. It is intellectually interesting to record and make sense of the past, whether it be of political, military, economic or artistic processes. I would just hate to see politicians, soldiers and business men make decisions only or mainly with their historical profiles in mind. It would make for sensational but often ruinous actions. With art, it would result mainly in inauthenticity and superficiality.

Great insight JLN and I agree with shepaints. The idea for this topic is from a program I was listening to on NPR and I wanted to know what others thought and of course I agree with you.

Still on the chicken and egg matter, much that has happened is not recorded, and much that has happened has been recorded in many ways by many observers, each presumably seeing things in a somewhat different light, but what we know now as history is taught from those recordings, so....I posit that the recording, which is sometimes though usually not first done by means of art processes, may create history.

truth
Oh great, my three favorites all together

Recording, art, and history??

truth
Yeah, smarty pants.

Art reflects the history of the culture; nothing more, and nothing less. The artist establishes his style through exposure to his/her environment. Without that cultural environment, the artist would be devoid of expression. c.i.