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Art And Art

Decent Essays

There are numerous ways in which art “moves” human beings. For centuries, the effect of art has been theorized and questioned. Through my colloquium, I hope to grapple with the ways in which art, made within and for a specific moment and culture, is able to live beyond its historical discourse and still express a profound, multivalent sense of meaning. Looking at philosophical, religious, sociological, and political texts from ancient time to the present, I will investigate the pressing question, what power does the image hold in society? I will explore the ways people have both thought about and used visual culture through history and across the world. Additionally, I seek to analyze how the societies that produced them can be recognized within the work. Using the texts on my booklist, I will explore the impact of the image through a range of intellectual and disciplinary traditions. I will start by examining the hopes and fears of art’s role in society, through the lens of the Bible and ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. Iconoclasm, or the destruction of religious icons and other images, has been prominent since the creation of the Bible. The ancient world abounded with warnings against specific Biblical images. What is it that they feared about art and representation? The ten commandments, written out in the Hebrew Bible, begins with God commanding, “I am the Lord your God”. Within this first commandment, we begin to see the prohibition against graven images

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