The Art Renewal Center (ARC) is dedicated to promoting realistic art. Its salon exhibition, which exhibited at the Salmagundi Club in New York this past May, recently opened at the Museu Europeu d’Art Modern (MEAM) in Barcelona, Spain, where it held the official award ceremony with great success. Over 500 visitors attended the opening event on Sept. 22, which opened alongside the Figurativas 2017 exhibition.
In addition to the 85 works on exhibit in coordination with the 12th International ARC Salon, there are 91 on exhibit from the Figurativas 2017 contest, for a combined 176 works representing the disciplines of painting, drawing, and sculpture.
The Epoch Times spoke with Kara Lysandra Ross, co-founder and chief operating officer of the Art Renewal Center, after the MEAM opening.
Since 1980, that number slowly increased, doubling by 2001. And in the past 17 years, there has been an exponential growth and [revived] appreciation of realism in the visual arts.
Clearly, a powerful desire has been re-awakened among artists to acquire these highly developed skills in order to create relevant, realist-based subject matter for today. As a result, realism is one of the fastest-growing movements in the 21st century.
The entries to both competitions combined were over 5,500 works from over 90 countries and over 3,000 artists. The show will remain on view until Nov. 26.
This is why in the 1960s, with the rise of Chairman Mao in China and the Cultural Revolution, all books on traditional Chinese culture and art were banned, and the paintings and art objects themselves were destroyed. Realist art and literature have the ability to communicate, shaping beliefs and therefore societies, which is why many governments view the arts as something that needs to be controlled.
Nothing says more about a culture than the art it idolizes. It represents what it values, what it thinks about, and essentially what it deems worth remembering. Art is the representation of a people, encapsulating its essence on every level. By attacking the art of a culture, you attack the culture itself.
China is not the only country that banned art for this purpose. It has been said that the English banned the Scottish bagpipes in the 1700s as a way of attacking their heritage. During World War II, the Polish press was liquidated, the libraries and bookshops were burned, and their paintings and sculptures were destroyed by the Nazis. And we are told over and over again that many other countries view the spread of American art and culture, such as film, painting, and music, as both a threat and an attack on their beliefs and society. Art has indeed a power of its own; otherwise it would not be viewed as such a threat.
In an article published in the New English Review a few years ago, titled “The Tyranny of Artistic Modernism,” Mark Anthony Signorelli writes, “Nothing is so important to the spiritual and mental flourishing of a people as its art. The stories they tell, the buildings they inhabit, the public spaces in which they gather, the songs they sing, the fashioned images they gaze upon—these things shape their souls more permanently and effectively than anything else. We live in a time when the art all around us accustoms men to, and insinuates into their souls, the most erroneous and degrading ideas imaginable about themselves and their world. A humane society can hardly be expected to grow out of such an adverse cultural environment.”
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” played a role in improving working conditions in factories; Elizabeth Thompson’s battle paintings spurred military reform; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” helped bring about an end to slavery; and the writings of Charles Dickens and his painter and sculptor counterparts, such as Augustus Mulready, J.G. Brown, and William Bouguereau, helped bring about awareness of the need to help the poor, to name a few.
The Art Renewal Center upholds the idea that artists play one of the most important roles in our society. They can reshape our world into a better place, where once again freedom of thought and real communication can be disseminated through art and the universal language of realism. With diligence and effort, a picture is once again worth a thousand words, versus needing a thousand words to explain it. Realist artists are pushing against the current and rescuing our heritage from those who have wished to destroy it.
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