Devil Advocating Art

Approximately 26,013 years ago, a small statuette of a woman was carved out out of limestone and painted with red ocher. A little more than a century ago, the Woman of Willendorf was found during an excavation of a paleolithic sight near Willendorf, a village in the lower part of Austria. Centuries later, the Greeks and Romans were making their own statues of women: Venus de Milo,  Nike of Samothrace, The Ecstacy of St. Thersea. My art history professor argues that no art is original, that each work of art that we have seen throughout history is a copy of something else, of someone else’s work, barring addition of some contrapaso or the addition of drama. I would hate to think that all the creativity in the world is soaked up by the pre-historic, stone-aged being who carved the Woman of Willendorf and that all things after that were a mere copy with some slight adjustments and ameliorations. It’s sad to think that no ideas are new ideas, but when I look at our 21st century world, I can’t stop the idea from creeping into my mind. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy. Tall rectangular buildings, houses built in the Grecco-Roman fashion. We pin a board on Pinterest and call it art. However, I can’t say with any overwhelming certainty that I agree with my art history professor. I have to acknowledge all the new and creative things that are cropping up everyday. Look at the iPhone 5, for example. The liquid crystal glass display holding back all sorts of software and interface capabilities doesn’t scream “art”. Or does it? Perhaps not in the sense of basilicas and keystones and triglyths and metopes, but maybe, just maybe, the iPhone a fascinating work of art. Although it lacks granite and watercolors, the iPhone 5 takes creativity to a place no one could have possibly imagined. And the beauty of it all, is that it is so simple, yet so brilliant. A speaker that reduces the sound of outside noise while speaking on the phone? So simple, so brilliant. I must conclude that my art history professor is wrong. Creativity isn’t dead, and art, perhaps has just evolved into something that doesn’t resemble the work of the DaVinci or Rafael. Although I will lament the intricate attention to detail that was relevant in Christian works of art/architecture such as the Sistine Chapel, but I think that we have grown from that, and that’s a good thing.