Art is the Tree of Life

Imagine walking to the Musemum of Modern Art in New York City, and seeing a massive piece of art work that engulfs you with a beating red and radiates about, and it changes the way you see about what art is supposed to be, Barnett Newman challenges you to think about what art is with his work Vir Heroicus Sublimis, and how each canvas that has oil pastel on it can change an individuals mindset. What makes art? who gets to decide what is classified as art? You can look at Marcel Duchamps art work Bicycle Wheel on a Stool and see that it is fact, what the name implies, a bicycle wheel on a stool, and it is considered a piece of art that is so infulencal that it can be displayed at a major muesum of art, not because of the subject of the art, but for the idea the art portrays. Art is for arts sake, the beauty and meaning comes from the eye of the beholder, and how each person indiviually takes the artwork in. In this essay I will be analysing three pieces of art work and why they fit into the category simply coined art for arts sake. The first of the three will be The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, and how each piece of art can be interpted completely different from one person to the other. The second piece will be the one that I mentioned eariler, Vir Heroicus Sublimis, by Barnett Newman, and why this piece of art is so important to the chromatic abstraction movement, and also how it plays on the human psyche as well. Lastly, the third artwork I will analyze is the scuplture by Umberto Boccioni, titled Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, and how even though this sculpture emerged from a very political movement, it has stuck to what the artist was feeling from the inside, and how speed was a very important thing not only to the futurist movement but also to the artist himself. I believe that art is a use tool, for the artist and also the viewer, art should be derived from how the artist is feeling and the emotions that come from within. The first piece we