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Current

1900 A.D. - Present Day 

 

Produced By: Ashley Yelpo

Rhetoric

 

From the early 20th century to present day, historical events and technologies have shaped the way art is created and opinions are expressed. The beauty of art is that it can shape the way a culture reacts, or a culture can shape the way art is conveyed. Not only do historical events influence art and its history, but technology plays an important role in how it has developed through the 20th century. Transformations of the stylistic perspectives of art are related to the evolutions of the rhetorical purposes art has in society. Art expressed through new mediums and technologies has allowed for our views of ideal beauty to progress into what people see as perfection today. The art of perfection is a style extremely different than styles seen at the birth of this significant century such as abstract art

Ideal Beauty

 

Ideal beauty installs the idea of a perfect appearance into our culture through influential images that conform our opinions and desires. The portrayal of beautiful characters is greatly influenced by technology because it has the ability to enhance or dismiss features that persuade audiences of a particular look. Specific figures such as the Gibson Girl were strong factors in determining the ideal beauty of women in the early 1900s. The Gibson Girl was originally a pen-and-ink drawing created by Charles Dana Gibson that portrayed women as strong, athletic individuals that could do it all without even breaking a sweat. American women were persuaded to capture her spirit of the early 20th century along with her femininity ("The Gibson Girl.").

 

Popular technologies such as the computer and Photoshop have had major influences on industries such as the fashion and film industries. As a result, ideal beauty in modern society is strongly based on perfection and artificial beauty. Skinny models with blemish free skin, bright eyes and white teeth became accepted as this artificial ideal beauty because these portraits depicted a figure not achievable by a real human. To formulate the ideal beauty, an ideal waist to hip ratio (WHR) was calculated and determined to be 0.7. WHR gave image makers and editors a basis for determining whether a model was attractive or not. As retouching software like Photoshop became popularized, a backlash of consumers rose against the false imagery portrayed in the media. Hunger for authenticity grew as the demand for retouching decreased. (Wilson).

History

 

Not only do the ideal beauties of art shape our views, but historical events do also. Painting created in the 1930's such as Aaron Douglas's "Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery through Reconstruction" depicted images of the history taking place at the time such as the migration of African Americans to the North that took place when they tried to escape racial oppression in the South. World War II propaganda showed patriotic American women taking on responsibilities to help their men in the war effort while still looking beautiful doing it.


Abstract images became more popular and common after the conclusion of World War II. Artists felt their expression could make a major mark on history by creating paintings of new styles. Abstract expressionists made their mark on America with their purpose to unite together to voice a social opposition after WWII and to create an art that showed moral beliefs (Stokstad, and Cothren 1075). Abstract art had could have no real meaning behind it which evoked a sense of simplification. This meant that expressionists were trying to evoke emotion into the audience rather than a specific message. They felt they could channel their art into a power to change the tradition of typical paintings (Pioch). 

Technology

 

Technologies such as cameras, computers and art tools have changed the way art is communicated and portrayed. Photography is able to capture the true essence of a society, but then there are other methods that use photography to construct what a perfect world should look like (Stokstad, and Cothren 1125). New technologies such as the computer have allowed for the expansion of the photography world. Photographs can be uploaded onto computers and then downloaded into editing programs such as Photoshop. The sole purpose of photography hasn’t necessarily changed, it just has more depth to it now. Photography once captured the moments of a real event, but now it is allowing events to be construed to make them seem realistic when they are not. The sense of truth behind photography is being obscured by the advancements in technology which enhance the artificialness of our society. 

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