Art and Politics \"Light Being the Very

Art and Politics

"Light being the very essence of our existence, a work of art that is not concerned with light has no right to exist." (Rosso 23)

The eye takes in and processes a world of information all at once. We do not even fully recognize all of the inputs that the brain processes. In fact, the brain is still more sophisticated than the world's most powerful computer. These facts have deep implications for art and art appreciation since the "impression" of the art is important in the sense that it attempts to recreate a reality. For an artist to try to recreate reality they must pay particular attention to light and color. However, all of this assumes an artist wants to "recreate" something natural and the feeling that accompanies it during the first impression. This is not always the case.

Other artists and architects have focused more on the functionality of space as opposed to its impression or the emotions that viewing the piece provides the viewers. An example of this can be provided by many of the architural achievements in Chicago in the nineteenth century had focused more on the functionality of spaces rather than their aesthetic appeal. This led critics from Europe and the East Coast to condemn many buildings as brutish, ugly, and uncultured (Merwood 14). However, beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder and many of citizens of Chicago found their city to be representative of something akin to evolution at play.

While many saw Chicago's buildings as unplanned and uncreative, the use of functionality in some ways illustrated the next generation of cities. Instead of being centrally planned and organized for an aesthetic appeal, Chicago was more democratically constructed with an array of different ideas that was formed through organic processes. Chicago went from a military encampment that acquired land through negotiations with the natives, to a bustling city that was the center of many agricultural goods and connected to the East Coast through a series of waterways. This serves as a metaphor to the possibilities that rapid expansion and development can have for a community and a metropolitan area.

Despite the functional design and the simple grid array that Chicago planners used, there were many interesting aspects to its development. One such aspect is that the necessities for office space made it possible for developers to build and rent out office space to several companies. Office space became something of a commodity in Chicago (Merwood 20). Therefore, the design became more of a financial consideration than an artistic one in most instances. As opposed to creating more visually appealing spaces, architects were focused more on creating taller buildings that could house more offices and create a greater return on investment. However, this functionality also came to represent some of the inherent ideas of the people and its values.

One of the values of the American spirit was certainly practicality and as a result this was embodied in its architecture. The city made the most efficient and effective use of its resources to promote growth and expansion. This was eventually explained in terms of evolution which was made popular by none other than Charles Darwin and his theories of natural selection. Americans had opportunities for economic and social mobility that were not available to other countries. However, to achieve this mobility people had to be creative in regards to their practicality and functionality. The best designs were the ones that produced the most efficient and effective use of both resources and time towards organizational or societal goals.

Other societies had very different goals however. Many of them were worried about faith in their God or other ends that were not necessarily devoted to efficiency. For example, the development of film and photography was a form of artistic representation that was initially devoted mostly to preserving history; which formed something of a paradox. The scientific method and the advent of technology had created a situation in which modernity would try to capture instances of the past. Despite forming an image of reality, it was argued that this image could not adequately mirror reality itself and that some artists were more adept at this than film could capture.

An example provided by John Ruskin when he defended modern painters in the mid-nineteenth century. He was quoted as saying that J.M.W. Turner produced "an entire transcript of the whole system of nature" that photography could not mirror itself (Barringer 20). In the early days of photography, the level of technology was still fairly low and the photos themselves were often distorted in some way. For example overexposure could produce a blurred image. However, artists could reproduce many aspects of a particular scene and the effects that caught the imagination better than technology could. This could be one of the first instance of a person competing against a machine.