Art is the set of disciplines that are oriented to an expressive and aesthetic purpose . Although it is true that a large number of human activities are related to the capacity for expression and aesthetics, only in art are these characteristics presented as meaning and reason for being. It is also true that the concept of aesthetics has been widely debated, but was never definitively eliminated.
Although the concept of art is usually associated with that of a developed culture, the truth is that artistic expressions can be found since the beginning of humanity, which is why we assume that the expressive vocation is innate to the human race . Continuing with this idea, it is possible to find cave paintings that prehistoric men used and that tell us in their own way the vicissitudes of their daily lives. This form of expression that today we call rock art , is one of the first recorded of our passage through the world. Thus, these cave paintings would be the most primitive antecedent of everything that today we would consider art: not only do they correspond to ancient forms of painting, but they are also part of the narrative, graphic in this case, of stories that involve other people or even animals.
Now, in keeping with more modern criteria, it is possible to segment the sphere of art into particular disciplines. Thus, art would be composed of various activities, among which architecture stands out , which focuses on the construction of buildings; dance, which consists of the execution of movements of the body to the sound of a rhythm; the sculpture , which is aimed at molded and shaped various figures ; the music , which harmoniously organized sounds and silences; painting, which is the graphic representation by means of pigments; and finally, the literature, which uses the use of the word. There are those who also attach great importance to cinematography and photography.
In the case of architecture, and sculpture, they were the two that first developed magnificently. Consider the Egyptian, Greek or Roman palaces, to name just a few examples of the great empires in the history of mankind. Or, for example, in the Vatican itself, the Holy See of the Catholic religion. Then, the painting enjoyed great heyday during the Renaissance period, and at the dawn of the Middle Ages. The great painters that we now recognize as the masters of this branch of art, created their magnificent works during this time. Da Vinci, Boticcelli, Michelangelo, are just some of them, and they also had the arduous task of making paintings on church domes, cathedrals, and religious frescoes on their walls.
The literature clearly benefited with the invention of Johannes Gutenberg: printing with movable type. From that moment, literature would then have a greater scope, perhaps not massive, but on a large scale , since books could be reproduced in a much more limited time.
Of all the branches of art previously exposed, perhaps literature and music (cinematography also in the case that it is considered within "art"), are those that have had a much more massive diffusion than the others. How is this massiveness measured? Both are produced by the market and are part of what we call "cultural industries": books or CDs are manufactured, produced on a large scale, and without differentiating one from the other, in the same way that stairs, sets of sheets are produced. or chairs. They are no longer the products of an author, unique and original, but rather mass-produced for the general public. In addition, the market indicates them as successes or failures, and everything in relation to the sale, to the number of copies of that work that have been sold. Examples of this are the best seller lists, in the case of books;
Despite these limited approaches, it must be borne in mind that the concept of art is far from being closed , being able to find other variants and reflections around it. The truth is that beyond all discrepancies, the works that countless artists bequeathed to us make our existence more enjoyable.