Art is an essential part of human existence found in various aspects of life, culture regardless of time or era. Art has been facilitated from perspectives of its cognition, perception, and aesthetics leading to objective and subjective opinions. Initially, art existed in the naturalistic form and was accepted based on the elements and designs. Naturalistic art in medieval times depicted real objects in their natural setting. Naturalism allows the representation of nature without distortions hence no need to offer interpretations. The shift from the natural image of the human to a more formulaic descriptions was as a result of social, political, religious and cultural climates.
The concept of change from naturalistic representation to formulaic representations is associated with various beliefs owing their relevance to the social, religious, and cultural climate of the time. Naturalistic depictions were designed through the creation of images which promoted specific social and political policies. Naturalistic representation of art describes the meaning and dimension of art to express their social political and cultural implications (Blatt & Blatt, 2014). The history and development of naturalism date back to 500- 1800 BCE where sculptures replicated the human body and claiming the achievement of various forms of naturalistic representation.
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In the recent past, the naturalistic representation of art has been replaced by formulaic descriptions. The change is contributed by the constant changes in social and political climates. Traditional naturalistic artist sought to present art without distortion and interpretation. However in the modern time, naturalistic has appealed to intellect and reason as people grow in knowledge and understanding changing the social climate. The shift from naturalistic to formulaic distorts conformity to nature and natural appearance (Blatt & Blatt, 2014). The naturalistic representation is essential as it offers a point of comparison and descriptions of work concerning nature.
The spread of formulaic representation makes the appearance of naturalism in sculptures possible throughout history, naturalist representation occurs into dimension arts o drawing and painting even with the limitations of mediums. Thus naturalistic sculptures are a typical appearance in the ancient period, they persist to the Hellenistic era, and they are present during the time of the Roman Empire, the late middle ages and also during the early and high renaissance (Nees, 2002). They also appeared in the neoclassical art and spread to the nineteenth century until its last phase (Blatt & Blatt, 2014). The spread of naturalistic art through time has significantly broadened the representation of individuals. The formulaic description has enlarged the image of humans to adopt a supra-individual nature by giving into the dominant elements of space and light.
Art has also adopted non-naturalistic elements from the classical age moving to the middle ages. The changes are attributed to religious influence here obedience to religion and the emergence of theological preoccupations which limited creativity and expression. Naturalistic representation of art as during this time viewed as profane rather than divine which inspired worldly views (Nees, 2002) introducing general laws to art and promoted the spread of the formulaic representation of art in the nineteenth century. Examples of naturalistic depictions distinguished in history include the Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals created in (1624) and Wilhelm ‘Leibl's Three Women in Church (1878-82) (Nees, 2002).
The evaluation of the shift to formulaic representations involves an analysis of the content of naturalistic art and isolating the non-naturalistic characteristics depicted by small deviations. The changes are then attributed to changes in social religion, cultural and political environment. However, despite formulaic representations, naturalistic art continues to inspire artistic inspiration due to its focus on inner vision and exploitation of the power of perception. The works also show the experience and influence of nature in the artist life in spite of other deviations.
References
Blatt, S. J., & Blatt, E. S. (2014). Continuity and change in art: The development of modes of representation . Routledge.
Nees, L. (2002). Early medieval art . Oxford University Press, USA .
