According to Webster’s Dictionary, art is “human expression of objects by painting, etc” (10). The words “human experience” adds meaning to art. Artists reveal their inner thoughts and feelings through their work. When we study a painting by Salvador Dali, the strange objects and the surrealist background portrays the eccentricity of the painter. Some ideas cannot be explained verbally. They can only be shown via a medium. We can get across what is in our minds or our hearts by a stroke of a brush, a drop of paint, a row of words, or something else. But to express ourselves, we do not need to limit what we call art.
We encounter art everyday. Art is paintings and sculptures, music and dance, film and photography. It is also fashion designing and architecture, novels and magazines. These seemingly different things have one thing in common – they are all ways in which humans convey themselves. For thousands of years, humans have used symbols to tell a story or describe a struggle. Art is the use of these symbols, symbols that represent us in some distinct way.
However one thing is for sure.Personal thoughts and eccentricity is not the foundation stone and the reason behind art.The primal feeling of fear does fit better though.
Fear is behind every single manifestation of art from it’s origins up untill today.
Fear of the god and divine that drove the hand of the ancients to draw,fear of people not being remembered after death,fear of loosing what you have ,fear of realization.
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
H.P. LOVECRAFT, Supernatural Horror in Literature