I don’t mean photorealism, but most art throughout civilizations has been highly stylized – each period and culture can pretty much be told apart by the art style, whereas today there’s infinite variation between individual artists. Shouldn’t realism be the first thing people try since it’s all around us? How did seemingly all art in history from different periods and cultures become so homogenic and specific to their eras?
In: Culture
Each historic period used art as a means of communication above all else.
Images communicate thoughts, ideas, rules that broke through all barriers of cultures, languages and religion. Illuminated manuscripts, sculptures, paintings served to communicate a religious doctrine because most people couldn’t read.
Rich powerful people, patrons and churches needed a means to express their power, and communicate to less powerful people to explain why if they didn’t believe the ‘right’ ideas, they would burn in hell
Leaders were painted as idealized. Perfect forms, faces, bodies so they could be represented as worship-able. Religion is power, power controls people, controlled people create a society.
It’s a type of evolution.
It’s like how did people create indoor electricity?. Lots of little steps backed by need, prior knowledge and power. Artist could always take a piece of charcoal and draw realistically. But there wasn’t a need for this, people didn’t do art for arts sake, for leisure or personal growth. Art was purpose driven historically. Art was a way to communicate an idea or instruction.
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