Often times art is thought of as an entity separate from culture and society; it doesn’t hold the same importance as science, mathematics, or other things that govern how we function as a society. However, art has been a staple of the human experience since we dawned as a species: it served as as a method for discovering how our world works scientifically, and though subtle, impacts how we think of our own culture and how we function as a society today.
Art was a vehicle into understanding the world through science; the Renaissance was an intersection of science and art. Leonardo da Vinci, a commonly known polymath, through seeking to better understand how to paint humans realistically led to groundbreaking studies in anatomy and physiology, “His study of anatomy, originally pursued for his training as an artist, had grown by the 1490s as an independent area of research… By his own count Leonardo dissected 30 corpses in his lifetime.” Da Vinci’s research was an impactful precursor to scientific illustrations and modern biomechanics. Leonardo da Vinci’s experience with drawing anatomy is a small part of larger story, the Renaissance. The Renaissance defined the culture of that period of time, and transformed how society functioned through art, “Renaissance art did not limit itself to simply looking pretty, however. Behind it was an intellectual discipline: perspective was developed, light and shadow were studied, and the human anatomy was pored over – all in pursuit of a new realism and desire to capture the beauty of the world as it really was.” The Renaissance was “a coming together of art, science, and philosophy.” Art led to a bigger passion to understand the world through science, and it questioned how to capture the real world as we perceived it in art. To do that, artists were required to study light and it’s effect on objects, how light and perspective creates three dimensional objects and how to translate that to a two dimensional form, the proportion and musculature of the human body and how if it’s depicted incorrect, humans look strange. Art essentially changed how society (a structure that provides an organization for a group of people in a region) functioned, by shifting it from a world that understood and organized itself through religion, to one that understood and organized itself through science.
Culture “refers to the set of beliefs, practices, learned behavior and moral values that are passed on, from one generation to another… It is something that differentiates one society from the other.” Art, just as beliefs, learned behaviors, moral values are succinctly distinct from culture to culture; each culture defines what those individual values are and the importance in their own culture, and those same values are ever-changing as time passes. Art is directly tied to culture, and it preserves what it felt like to exist in a particular time. Think of American culture in the 80s: the AIDS crisis, President Reagan, the first space shuttle, the rise of computer technology. Those who lived in this period most likely had other things come to mind referring to the culture of the time as well: Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, music from Madonna, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, the 2nd and 3rd installment of the Star Wars trilogy, The Breakfast Club, etc. Art (and more accessible and diffused: entertainment/media) is synonymous with culture in a certain period of time, and it gives humans a common experience to rely on to recall what it was like to live during that period.
Art is necessary for more reasons that human expression. It isn’t something we can sever from our lives, it’s entwined with culture and society. It has a symbiotic relationship with culture and society: art gave a spark to the scientific revolution, and is a medium in which humans remember the past.
Works Cited:
Heydenreich, Ludwig. “Leornardo da Vinci – Italian Artist, Engineer, Scientist.” Encycopedia Britannica, 19 Feb. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leonardo-da-Vinci/Anatomical-studies-and-drawings
“The Renaissance – Why It Changed the World.” The Telegraph, 6 Oct. 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/london-culture/renaissance-changed-the-world/
S, Surbhi. “Difference Between Culture and Society.” Key Differences, 31 Mar. 2016, https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-culture-and-society.html
Data/Society/Decision-making Spring 2019 