by Deborah English

Created on: September 18, 2007   Last Updated: October 04, 2011

Much debated in Art circles, the question itself is the most enduring since the beginning of the 20th century. Why the value of art ever became an issue, can only be appreciated by a little knowledge of how and why our view about art and its purpose was forced to change.

Historically, Art had centered upon the depiction of religious belief and iconography. However, the industrial revolution followed later by advances in science and technology, and the invention of the machine, radically changed the world. God began to pale in significance to the relevance of these advances and the eye of the world turned instead, towards science and technology for its answers.

Additionally, photography was invented. No longer was it necessary to commission a painter to produce a portrait of your family or a literal depiction of the landscape. The concept of art began to crumble beneath our feet. It appeared that progress was leaving art for dead.

And thus Modernism was born. The inception of Modernism and the ensuing entourage of "isms" (Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Constructivism, Destructivism, and so on) was the beginning of the new journey of Art into stylistic and philosophic experimentation. Art turned from the world and began to focus microscopically on itself in order to find a new reason for being.

Meanwhile, the advent of the first and second world wars, and the ensuing wholesale destruction caused directly by advances in science, conspicuously: the devastating results of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and the machines that became the tools of mass murder, made us painfully aware of our potential for self-destruction. Suddenly placing our faith in science and technology began to seem like folly. As well, many believed that if there ever was a God, he had now most certainly abandoned us.

With the disappearance of an ultimate truth in which to invest belief and hope, the optimism which previously characterized human endeavor transformed into an epoch steeped in skepticism. With nowhere else to go, it was with an uncomfortable acceptance that we had to face ourselves in the mirror. For life and for art, there was no turning back.

In the 1940s and 50s, the Abstract Expressionists brought new life to Art by embracing the axiom "Art for Art's sake." The belief that art should be valued simply for being art was a refreshing reprieve from the notion it should always make a point.

Abstract Expressionism showed us that visual art no longer needed to represent intellectual ideas or concrete things, and as a result the experience of art went beyond the utterance of words. Abstract Expressionism became the "pure art" and almost an aesthetic divinity: the ultimate purveyor of truth and spirituality.

Of course, in the 1980s Art became big business. Even now artists are overwhelmingly recognized as Artists, only by the popularity and fiscal success of their exhibitions. But do big bucks in exchange for art work really validate it as art?

To formulate the answer is to recognize the difference between Art and that which masquerades itself as art: Art's antithesis: the impostor. This is a problematic impasse indeed, because only the artist knows the unique source of their expression. The viewer can only stand in front of the work and be affected or not. Art enters you and continues to live inside of you long after you have walked away.

And still the question poses itself: what is the value of art?

No matter whether you prefer the idea that art represents recognizable objects, abstract ideas, or emotional states, there is one solid theme that runs through the history of Art production: it is art as communication.

The value of Art rests in its capacity for communication.

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