>>2973170You could go even further and say that photography killed classic skill-based Art - while at the same time prompting the modern era in Art.
Think about it. Photography completely usurped the role of history's documenter. It replaced painting as the primary source of historical imagery. It could record things faster and more accurately. Artists no longer had to concern themselves with communicating important events - it was being done more efficiently by a man with a tiny box...
"Painting is dead"
- Painter Paul Delaroche upon seeing the Daguerreotype in action, 1839.
With the advent and gradual popularisation of the camera, traditional artists began to lose interest in realism. By the 1880s abstraction was starting to creep into art, and by the early 1900's total abstraction was already being played with. Thus started the era of "Modernity" in the art community. A time of experimentation in which the painter, now unbridled by history, was free to explore fantasy, language, raw emotion and symbolism. Being technically excellent was no longer a concern. World War One became a powerful catalyst for change and prompted a well documented swerve away from the bourgeois art of the rich. The huge "selfies" - portraits depicting land, horses and jewellery. The idealism of the romantic era was shunned. Reality was calling. Painful reality. War. Excess. Suffering. All of which were in turn were combated with escapism and fantasy.
The fantasy of speed, of new dimensions, of the hidden mind, of non existence, of pure shape and in the end ANYTHING, it was declared, was art if you felt it communicated something. If you felt it was worth further contemplation than it is ordinarily given.
So many people detest this era - calling it degenerate. A time when beauty and skill were put aside. But the truth is that the experimentation of this period was key in the development of modern society and its morals and ideals.
