"In the first age art, is simple, lineal, optimist, in the second age it is realist, classic, in its 3rd age, it becomes as the mind of an old man, full of form, and anguish, emotional, disturbing."

Individual art, the genius... and its relationship with social art

One of the great questions of philosophy of art, is why there are clear parallelisms between the style of art in different phases of history?

Only an organic analysis of art as the mind of civilizations explains clearly in a rational manner the nature of those canons of aesthetics that change and return throughout history.

In that sense we have to differenciate the individual artist, with his variations of style that are remarkable in the case of individual genius, and the collective artist, that belongs to an school of art, that repeats a canon.

The style of an artist, is the peculiar way in which the mind of the artist, transforms the biological “Wor[l]d” of perception, that all humans have in common; the sounds and image we perceive as the Universe. While most people see reality under those biological limits, the artist goes beyond the subjective eye-Wor[l]d of the human species, and adds certain personal subjective changes to those images and words. This is the artist's style.

The artist with his style goes beyond the “common way of perceiving reality”, and shows those other possible Worlds, that maybe some other species in some far away planet perceive directly (imagine a world where eyes see with the colors of a fauvist painter).

Still in the Earth, men see reality in a certain manner, and only artists are able to break with those conventions of the mind. Such individual artists are rightly called genius, since they create an entire new way of perception. When such new way of perception is meaningful, and harmonic, and can be understood at least partially by the audience, we have found an original artist.

Yet, in as much as men belong to social organisms, where they communicate in-form-ation to other human “cells” of the social organism, even individual genius, and its perception of reality, reproduces into works of art, that transmit the information to other “neurons” of the social organisms. In this manner, styles are transmitted, and create “schools” of art where many similar artist display the same style.

If the individual artist expresses its mind experience through its personal art, we can say that the society expresses its collective mind experience through schools and styles of art.

The 3 styles of art

And there are as we saw in the analysis of cyclical art, only 3 basic styles of art.

The style of art of a young society, or epic art, the style of art of a mature society, or classic, realist art, and the style of art of a dying society, baroque art...

So at the beginning of civilizations artists are young, and arrogant, epic, and energetic in their work. As society matures, the artist becomes logic and realist. Finally when societies enter in decadence, the artist becomes baroque, eclectic, with an excess of imagination and in-form-ation, that often hides a cynical, negative vision of the corrupted culture in which he lives. It is the age of prophets of extinction that foresee the demise of the civilization. It is also the age of depth and latitude, as the artist has the entire experience of his civilization to learn from.

The canon of ethics and aestehtics: Styles of collective arts.
We talk in fact of canonic art, of art with a young, classic, or baroque style as the basic, unifying concept of all artists and arts across history. Either visual or verbal art, respond to those styles. And so we can talk of human ethic and aesthetic canons in art, in all civilizations and individuals, even the genius of history.

Since we have defined human art, as the visual and verbal perception of space and time by the human mind, it follows that collective art is also visual and verbal art, of collective nature. And that collective nature imposes canons of ethics and aesthetics, canons of moral, and beauty, carried by the word, and the eye of the human artist. Among those canons we prefer the realist canon, as we prefer to be mature than, children or old men, but if we are old, if we are as we seem to are in the human baroque, most artists will be baroque, will exercize the style of his society.
For most of history, Art has been a social phenomena, since men, lived in a social organism. The artist lives within a society. His ideas are similar to those of other artists of that society, fruit of customs and learning processes within that society.

And it adapt to the age of that society. And so, the information that the mental cells of a civilization develop (the artistic information of a culture) are similar in most of the artists of a civilization, in a given moment of time and space. Styles in art gather those similar mind-wor[l]ds, coming from people living in the same place, at the same time, as neurons work in the same manner, in the same organisms in the same age. So I am a cell of my age, in time and space, of the Human baroque, of the European baroque, of the Latin baroque, of the American baroque. In all the civilizations I have lived, I have seen the same style and I have become an artist of the organism of dying History.