Throughout history there has always been a need for people to express themselves. In art as we know it today there is plenty of expressions or impressions, a way of telling and a way of asking questions. We have seen early stages of paintings in caves, classical painting and sculptures in the ancient Greece and Rome. We know some great artists from the renaissance time who has left us stunned of admiration in churches, cathedrals and some that now are featured in museums all around the world.
We have gotten to know the style of all the avant-garde movements and the ism’s. Artists has pushed the boundaries and opened up new doors. The area that describes art has increased and forms as installations, performance and video, just to mention a few, are also a part of the art family today.
We are pretty sure of how it all started, but when we ask ourselves “where does it end”? Maybe we should reconsider and instead ask “how does it continue”?
It has been said that the 20th Century brought a time that could be called “the end of philosophy and the beginning of design“. Maybe there is not anything more to be said? Instead of speaking you could be designing for a purpose. Instead of just telling people what to do, what to think, you could by a design make them question the function of the design, its logic and from there make the viewer or the people involved get their mind working in perhaps a new track.
By questioning a function rather than a decorative work of art we might learn something new. But without everything that has been said before, we would not be where we are today.
I think that art movements continue by a contemporary language using all types of media to get through to people. We are much more aware of our nature today and how fragile it is which is why we need to consider our needs. If there is a new language I think it is an ecological one, it might take a while before we all understand it, but we have to try. Design as an art form is being welcomed in more and more places, both public and private places. Design does not always have to be protected in a gallery or a museum; it can be in our lives on another level than traditional art.
In the beginning of the 20th century the avant-gardes scattered out in Europe and also in the states. There were a lot of different movements and groups of artists working with different views and techniques during the same time. In the avant-garde groups there were often painters, theorists and philosophers working together and striving to get their word out there through manifestos. Ideas, rules and ways of living, it was all stated in the manifesto.
Up until the Dada Movement, art was more or less painting or sculpture, it could be observed and analyzed by other artists, knowledgeable people in the art world and admired by the everyday person. And then one day there was an artist that turned the art world a bit upside down. Marcel Duchamp and his “ready-mades” got one to question what and why something should be considered art, or why it even had to be considered and not just assumed to be art if an artist said so.
