Since art has always had the extremity to influence and shape the world around us. Some works are landmarks in history—either by challenging political norms or capturing developments in society or exploring the limits of what’s artistically possible. And these masterpieces didn’t just change the way of the art world they altered the way we saw the world and ourselves and our societies.
Until the introduction of the first digital era, art has always progressed from the first time humans put their hand to a cave wall, to the present where specific works have become a nod of cultural change in itself. One such example in the digital age is the rise of the picture made of text, where technology combines art and language in surprising new ways. Here, before we get on to the world as it is now, we should address what are some of the most impactful pieces, if not the most influential pieces, throughout the history artworks that really changed the world.
Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci 1503–1506)
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is undoubtedly one of the most recognisable paintings in the world and is credited for the way portraiture became so popular. Da Vinci gave the world a whole new look with sfumato (a technique to soften edges) and his calm expression, mysterious smile which added an incredibly realistic, almost psychoanalize aspect taken nowhere else. Mona Lisa became a symbol of Renaissance art and humanity’s quest to know about their world, even though it’s often seen as the first work of art that changed portraiture into the art of high art. As a piece so long over the centuries it has incited endless fascination and even controversy providing a timeless example that art has the power to change culture.
Its fame soared after it was stolen in 1911 from the Louvre and found two years later: it already possessed enormous cultural importance. The power that our expression in art can have, that the Mona Lisa today is still one of the most visited, most analyzed works of art that we have ever had.
Pablo Picasso, 1937 – Guernica
One of the most powerful anti war paintings ever produced is Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. Following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Picasso devised a mind blowing combination of surrealism, cubism and Symbolism to express the horror, chaos and suffering associated with war which was conjured up by the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica. “It’s a nightmare of what violence and oppression have done to human beings, particularly innocent people,” said Ochs, who painted the large-scale mural in shades of black, white and grey.
Guernica was more than a visual commentary turning it into a global symbol of protest against fascism and violence. Guernica went well beyond the art world—Guernica became the battle cry of political activists and human rights activist. As a political statement in modern art; Picasso’s representation of the human condition breaking down into abstract and fragmented figures is one of the most powerful.
Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1486)
The Birth of Venus is one of the most famous works from the Italian Renaissance. The painting shows Venus, the goddess of love, rising in a shell symbolising beauty and divine love, rising from the sea. The Birth of Venus is so revolutionary in part because it is so beautiful, but also because it represents the ideals of Renaissance humanism and classical mythology. Botticelli resurrected the ancient Greek and Roman depictions of gods and goddesses and brought classical world into Renaissance thought.
The painting challenged medieval representations of religious figures in that they were often humanoid, yet illustrated spirituality, not human form, while painting exalted the experience of physical, sensual beauty. It also marked a result of the Renaissance period’s range of moving to celebrate human body and human experience.
Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory (1931)
As an art movement, surrealism aimed to escape the limits of reality and excavate the unconscious mind. One of the most iconic surrealist art pieces is Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory. In this dreamlike landscape Dalí shows a landscape where time represented as melting; soft watches on trees, ledge and a strange face. The work is about how time flows, is about how time flows, is about how time flows and is about how the way time flows how the way time flows either comes back on itself or not and is about what time represents and what not and does time exist.
However, Dalí’s painting is often interpreted as a meditation on nature and the human experience, on time and memory itself. It showed us how our feeling about time and how we conceive of time are wrong, and how fragile our ideas of time, reality, and memory are. The Persistence of Memory is one of the most ambiguous paintings of the 20th century, and demonstrates that art can awaken us to thoughts of the very nature of existence.
The theme for the night of the art exhibition is The Starry Night (Vincent van Gogh, 1889).
The Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh, is one of the world’s most beloved paintings, and for good reason: It expresses the great drama and purity of human identity. The Starry Night was created at a point when Van Gogh, who had dedicated himself to an exceptionally somber art form called realism, suddenly arrived at a kind of anti-art expressionism. The piece has been capturing the attention of generations of viewers, with the swirling night sky, the glowing stars, and the dreamlike aspects of the work.
Sometimes the painting is taken to be a sign of the artist’s emotional strife, but also as the human face of felicity. This sets the Starry Night apart as a tremendously important work that changed the focus of the relationship between emotion and art, and has cemented its place as the symbol of expressionism and the belief that art can be used to express emotion. This is just another example of how personal battles can lead to universally understood art.
The School of Athens (Raphael, 1509- 11)
Amongst the most famous frescoes of the Renaissance, Raphael’s School of Athens is found in the Vatican’s Stanza della Segnatura. The image shows a collecting of some of the most famous Greek philosophers and thinkers ancient, as Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, symbolising the intellectual spirit of the Renaissance. What makes the painting unique is Raphael’s synthesis between classical philosophy and Renaissance ideas about architecture, then the idea of the great thinkers in a space that is at once grounded in architectural realism, and in the spiritual realm of intellectual pursuit.
A School of Athens symbolized, amongst much else, the intellectual and artistic flourishing of the Renaissance, an emblem of the close connection between philosophy, art and science. This fresco inspired generations of thinkers and artists who shared it with many and spread further the idea of the Renaissance and the future of Western thought.
Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon ushered in the Cubist movement, and is a pivotal work in the development of modern art. These five female prostitutes in a brothel are rendered in fragmented, distorted, shape and face in a groundbreaking work. Where Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was concerned, radical abstraction had severed the traditional use of representation and redefined forms, space, and perspective.
It should go without saying that the painting’s impact on the creation of abstract art cannot be overstated. Dem nossoelles d’Avignon challenged the norms of beauty and representation, expanding art’s territory, and changing the way artists saw the human body and the notion of space for ever.
The Girl with a Pearl Earring (Johannes Vermeer, 1665)
The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer is often called the North’s Mona Lisa. It is a young girl in weird clothing, with a wonderful pearl earring that draws the eye. Celebrated for its extremely good use of light and color and making us feel close to the subject, the painting is appreciated.
The question of the girl’s identity, and the expression in her face, make this painting so powerful. The painting deviated from the standard tradition of portraiture, whose artists often placed their subjects front and center, both physically and emotionally, because of their status or wealth. The Girl with a Pearl Earring continues to draw audiences and symbolise how beautifully art can invest emotion.
Conclusion
What they didn’t just do was make us remember what it was like to see these famous artworks, these famous works of art, because these were more than just taking moments in time. Each piece spoke to social challenges, personal turmoil, and the reimagining of reality, leaving each one with an indelible mark on the art and culture of our understanding of the times.
The Mona Lisa by da Vinci and Guernica by Picasso demonstrate just how art changes visual culture, but as much as art can shape society itself. What is painted on a canvas is not all that art is about—it’s about the ideasighton the canvas inspire, the movements and revolutions it spurs, and how it becomes a part of our shared identity.
