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Pratt Humanities July 6, 2012 Artists and their Art Art is a universal language, with many dialects, enabling everyone to speak this language. Over the centuries, many great artists have represented us, our values and our beliefs through their art work. With the passage of time, their methods have changed, their style has evolved, and so has the thought process involved in the creation of their works of art. Twentieth century artists in the western world, which include movie makers, architects, and photographers, among many, have broken away, from the art of old, and have fashioned their own style and method after the society they live in and what the people in that society prefer to see. Their recurring styles and methods have become the universal themes. Each of the types of artists has embraced one or all of the themes, and made it their own, and each has handled the universal themes in their own way. Movie makers in the twentieth century incorporated all universal themes into their art time and time again, sometimes, all at once. Love stories abound in movie plots and movie makers encouraged the production of these stories, because it is the nature of society to grasp any sign of hope in life for love and happiness and latch on to it for dear life. The public love fairy tale endings and the film industry capitalized greatly. They also showed us what their take on beauty was, and we still see it today, in every movie made. The model female according to the film industry was a mockery to all women everywhere, as few woman could naturally live up to the standards set up for the female, by the filmmakers. They handled the matter of beauty indelicately, and threw the female population into a panic which instigated a catalyst of events that have now made the beauty

product and cosmetology industries the multi billion dollar industries they are today. In giving the population hope that everyone is capable of finding love, and with the image of women changing, no one was quite ready to face the concept of death or transcendence so twentieth century filmmakers did not bank on those themes to a great extent. The architects used the theme of transcendence in favor of beauty, love and death. They designed for specific needs and did not try to copy nature or cover it up. They wanted their art to coexist with its surroundings and nature, each with a separate identity, complementing each other, never taking away from the other. Frank Lloyd Wright, an American architect and writer said of the space within which nature and structures reside: No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.(Wright, http://quotes.zaadz.com/Frank_Lloyd_Wright). Their work sometimes emphasized the relationship between two opposite elements. Overall, twentieth century architects designed their buildings in the purest of classical form. They designed their art in a way that sent the message of being above and independent of the themes that had hampered the architects in the centuries before them. Be it themes of grandeur for the church, or opulence for the needy royals and nobles. Their work, they felt, had finally passed beyond the limits of visual ecstasy into the realm of thought, where a person was not hampered with so much decoration. When this hindrance was removed, they felt the simple train of thought went unbroken. Photographers in the twentieth century covered all the universal themes but concentrated on death and transcendence the most. They were the eyes of the people when the First World War was coming to an end, and in its still aftermath. They brought to people, the heartbreaking sights of the battlefield, and its confusion. Then they showed us the result of the war as the great depression rolled in. They were there to show us the blinding contrast between the rich and the

poor, those affected in small ways, and those affected in ways that were on a much larger scale. Their photos were stark, truthful and unforgiving. They wanted us to remember every feeling and every emotion and feel as if we were there. Aaron Siskind, an American expressionist photographer said of the art of photography and its need for us to bear witness: Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever.it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.(Siskind, http://www.dramainnature.com/quotes_about_photography.htm) Photographers also dealt in the theme of transcendence. They wanted to free themselves of the natural boundaries that keep us, and stop time, if only long enough, to capture a moment, a moment that will be saved forever, at its most beautiful and still. They succeeded in many respects. They caught the ravages of war, they captured lovers, children, nature, poverty, wealth and just about anything that was worth remembering. Hennri Cartier Bresson, a French photographer often referred to as the father of modern photojournalism was quoted as saying Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.(Bresson, http://www.quotegarden.com/photography.html). Twentieth century artists speak in far more simpler tones than their ancestors. They are still just as passionate, but more subdued and they have struggled to be heard and recognized as artists in their own rights, away from mantle of the glorious masters that came before them. They have found subjects they like and respond to and as time has passed, these subjects have become the themes we look for and recognize in every art piece that is unveiled today.

Works Cited

Cartier Bresson, Henri. Quotations about Photography. The Quotation Garden. 25 March 2007. 20 April 2007. < http://www.quotegarden.com/photography.html>

Lloyd Wright, Frank. Quotes by Frank Lloyd Wright. Zaadza. 2007. 20 April 2007. < http://quotes.zaadz.com/Frank_Lloyd_Wright>.

Siskind, Aaron. Quotations about Photography. Drama in Nature. 2000. 20 April 2007. <http://www.dramainnature.com/quotes_about_photography.htm>