Art and society?

Does art imitate life – or is it the other way around?

"I think a lot of graffiti is art but not all of it. Not every piece of canvas with paint on it is art either." (Student response to a query about street art) When discussing art in popular culture there are very few boundaries to adhere to. Almost any form of media can be considered as art. But not all works are good examples of art and there are several determining factors that help to decide on the artistic quality of a piece. This essay will discuss in response to the above quote the...

Traditionally, we have believed that art imitates life. The painter represents what he or she sees by producing a scene on a canvas. The sculptor does the same with bronze or stone. A photographer or film maker does it even more directly. A writer describes life in his or her books. This simple concept is known as mimesis. But some have questioned the one-way nature of mimesis by arguing that art also changes the way we view the world, and in fact, life sometimes imitates art rather than the other way around. The person who first articulated this belief effectively was Oscar Wilde. Speaking about the foggy conditions in London in the late 19th century, he wrote that the way we perceive them changed because of art. Referring to the "wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas lamps and turning houses into shadows" he argued that "poets and painters have taught