SEARCHING FOR BEAUTY IN WESTERN PAINTING IN THE LIGHT OF IDEAS CHANGING FROM MEDIEVAL AGE TO MODERNISM

Abstract

“Art” and the accompanying “beauty” have never been topics that might be defined easily.
The elements, purposes, ideational and social status of art have been in a continuous change as
sociological, economical, cultural and political parametres of every era evolves; and artists have been in search of different pointof views and in consequence, have introduced different aesthetic
approaches. While the medieval art of the Western world serves completely for religious purposes and
does not consider beauty as an element to be related to art; the Renaissance seeks the beauty as a
component of art in cultural heritage. However, the necessity for the painting to have an educative
and didactive expression is the fundamental rule for this era and the subject of painting is usually
based on the Bible and other holy, historical, literal, and even fictional manuscripts. This situation
persists in a similar manner until the eighteenth century; to move beyond borders that were detected
and crossed accidently was only possible in the eighteenth centrury. From the beginning of this
century, visual arts detract from textualism and people become more attacted to its unique qualities,
and this approach exercised a great influence on the modernism of twenty-first century. In the modern
approach, painting is analyzed within the frame of basic elements of plastic. Philosophers and artists
from every era have tried to define and interpret art in the light of ever-changing ideas of every era.
The aim of this article is to analyse these interpretations over the Western painting from the Medieval
age to Twenty-First Century.