Beauty Is Not In The Eye Of The Beholder from BK on Vimeo.
Paintings have become a piece of mass produced information as the original paintings have lost their value because of the invention of the printing press. The replicas are now available easily and because of this only a few people would actually go and see the original painting.
Painting are merely not just subjective, a lot of times the meaning of the painting or the piece of art can be changed by adding music, words or captions to it. and often it is interpreted according to experiences of the viewer. a person coming from a rural background might see it in a different way as compared to someone who is from the city. It is beyond a person or an individual in it. It talks a lot about the person in detail without the word. Sometimes you don't need words to talk about the person in the painting, the posture, attire, facial expression or light inside the painting can tell you a lot about the subject.
Before mainstream media, it was the painting that were the form of advertising. The artist were commissioned by the monarchy or the rich to paint them or to paint for them. People would get themselves painted to give an impression about themselves or leave a statement for the society.
Goddesses seen in the early paintings were painted as the perfect human beings just like how we see the image of the perfect woman being portrayed by the media again and again, giving us this delusion of not being perfect or being a misfit and always striving to be something that we are not. Same was the case for Gods or kings, they were always shown with exaggerated fitness of their bodies and as someone that everyone should aspire to be.
Now advertising is replaced or had already replaced that form of propaganda. Now we are constantly told by the media to dress up in a certain way or to look a certain way in order to get accepted in the society. First false needs are created that eventually come out as a commodity. After the commodity, their obsession is created in the society which is termed as fetishism.
What is a commodity? A Commodity is something that satisfies the human need. In the context of culture, culture eventually becomes Culture Industry where the cultural products are lose their originality. And they then merely become a product that people use to get accepted in the society.
Lets look at this way, culture in the beginning is the representation of people of a particular area and its mere concern is providing identity to a group. But it evolves to become an industry that merely becomes a source to earn capital. People then become obsessed with the cultural products and their value in the society is measured by money not by what need they fulfill.
