Artistic Image

Art is a specific form of social consciousness and human activity. This reflects reality in artistic images. Moreover, art is one of the most important means of aesthetical comprehension and portrayal of objective reality. Artistic image is a form of reproduction of objective reality in art emanating from a certain aesthetic ideal life. Man’s aesthetic relation to reality is the specific subject matter of art and its task is the artistic portrayal of the reality.

An artistic image by the creative imagination, talent, mastery and skill of the artist.

Thus life, art’s specific subject, is processed and assimilated in all its diversity and splendor, its harmony and dramatic interactions rendered in an artistic image by the creative imagination, talent, mastery and skill of the artist.

The artistic image is an unbreakable unity of intertwined opposites –subjective and objective, the logical and emotional, the abstract and concrete, the general and particular, the necessary and accidental, the inherent and outer, the whole and part, the essence and appearance, the content and form.

The blending of these opposites in the course of a creative process into one whole, live image of art enables the artist to give a vivid, emotionally intense, potentially stimulating and, at the same time, deeply inspiring and highly dramatic portrayal of man’s life, work and struggles, his triumphs and defeats, search and aspirations. Thus, man, his social links and relations, the life and activity of people in concrete historical conditions are always at the center of any work of art.

The subject matter of art — life in all its multiform –is mastered and presented by the artist in a specific form of reproduction cited as artistic images.
The specific methods of reproducing reality and artistic tasks as well as the material means of portraying artistic images determine the specific types of art (word rhythm, color, light, shade, proportions, scope etc.) In this backdrop, literature and cinema — two very powerful means of expression — may be viewed and judged, and their interaction and inter-relation can be analyzed.

In literature, the aesthetic reproduction of the objective reality is made through the word — this first grew in the late Paleolithic epoch (from 40,000 – 20,000 BC). In cinematography (a modern form of first visual, then audio-visual), the same is manifested through the embodiment by actors of the characters’ actions underlying dramatic conflicts.

This opinion was first published in Meghdutam.com (between 1999 to 2003).

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Tapan Dasgupta ( 10 Posts)

Tapan Dasgupta, a business associate caters to corporate brand promotion and scribbles at pastime to shape out literary forms.
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