From Anna:


I found it interesting that photography has been playing such a major role in painting and continues to do so.  I never really gave it much thought, but after taking this class, I realized that most of contemporary painters are borrowing directly from photographic images and very few are actually studying the figure, the landscape, etc. by observation.  We live in an age when the romantic beauty of nature or human form is not such a cool thing to worship whether it is in painting, music or other form of art.  We are trying to distort it and find new unconventional beauty in everything that surrounds us.  Photography and Photoshop make it all so more tempting and inviting to take images apart and reassemble.  I am not an advocate for revival of the naturalist beauty aesthetic, but I am just curious when this era of ugly truth in art will be over.  What has been traditionally thought of as the ugly things in life that we currently see in art such as violence, pornography, and poverty are deemed beautiful and meaningful now and have been for a while.  I do feel that they are in a way more interesting and more beautiful than some of the straightforward, conventional types of beauty that we discard; yet, I think this is a social, economic and political issue.  The United States is a wealthy country and most artists here grow up in a somewhat predictably comfortable atmosphere.  Few are severely malnourished or physically and emotionally scarred by the societal problems.  In other countries, for example in India, that is not the case.  For instance, when "Slumdog Millionaire" won the Oscar prize in the States, very few people in India wanted to see this movie, because  it portrayed their bitter survival so vividly.  Most people in India want to see happiness and beauty in their art, not poverty and despair that surrounds them in daily life.  I just wanted to share this thought and observation and wondering what others think about such trends in art.