It’s not a secret that artists have always been a very important part of humanity since the very beginning. Works of art inspire us, form our thinking, answer the questions we’re afraid to even ask ourselves. Art opens new perspectives, it also lets us understand the physical and metaphysical worlds around us. It lets the society develop and become bigger. If we want to move further, art is crucial.
Since the earliest cave paintings art lets people share ideas, tell stories, create beauty and form new identity. In the beginning, art was used as a tool for communication. Cave paintings are not the most beautiful and aesthetic in the world, but it doesn’t even matter. The main thing is they reached the goal: to express the meanings via symbols and images.
Human is the only species in nature that capable of creating, and this is one of our most important differences. Art is always a process of developing new ideas, concepts, beliefs and decisions. People are born with an inner unbreakable aspiration for self-expression. This desire is embedded in neurons at the genetic level. Art develops a so much needed in today's rapidly developing world sense of self-identification.
Art today is an incredibly powerful expression tool for society in which it’s created. Contemporary art reveals the values of the epoch, documents and even predicts its cultural identity. It’s the way of not only saving the culture, but also creating new one during the times when the society is collapsing.
Art stimulates our brain and improves memory. According to the science researchers, even a couple of minutes of just watching art can improve your cognitive skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity. A study conducted by scientists from Northwestern College in the United States showed that viewing works of art such as paintings and sculptures improves the ability to remember information. When a person sees a picture (it doesn't matter which genre or medium), the occipital cortex of the brain is stimulated. American neuropsychologist Michael Gazzaniga believes that, in moments of interaction with art, "perception, memory, attention, motor skills, emotions, abstract thinking and understanding of someone else's consciousness — all these mechanisms are involved in complex work."
The most important thing is that it can inspire and bring together an enormous amount of people all around the world. Art is a reflection of artistic images in the external reality and the inner world of people. It surrounds people everywhere. Walking down the street you can see replicas or references to famous masterpieces, the music you hear in the cafe is also a work of art, dance, cinema, all this is an integral part of our everyday life. By this we come to the conclusion that the absolute majority of people interacts with art on a daily basis and it’s simply wrong saying that art doesn’t affect the society we live in. Art affects it, as well as it affects other areas of life. Various artistic trends of the XX century, engaged in the search for new forms of world exploration, had a significant impact on the development of design in the field of shaping. Modern furniture and interior design develops and accumulates its artistic and design capabilities due to new means of artistic expression, new principles and techniques developed by artists in the process of solving their own creative tasks. In the 1960s, one of the leading principles in the organization of subject-spatial forms in furniture and interior design was a system of principles developed in such a current of modern art as pop art. Pop art invented by Andy Warhol has become a new milestone in art, bringing it to the masses. The idea of pop art is a return to reality. Therefore, the sources of inspiration were food packaging, celebrities, comics, advertising posters, television, household items, stereotypes. Everything that is found in the ordinary life of ordinary people. Pop art has become the art of social equality, understandable to everyone.
The ability to understand art and be highly educated in this sphere is a necessary advantage of a modern person.
