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A. There are few statues in the Middle East. B. Art is a good means for people to know about religions. C. Artists express their feelings and opinions in their works. D. People know more about our culture through learning art history. E. Art is more objective than history itself.

 

A study of art history might be a good way to learn more about a culture than is possible to learn in general history classes. Most typical history courses concentrate on politics, economics and war. But art history focuses on much more than this because art reflects not only the political values of a people, but also religious beliefs, emotions, and psychology.

In history books, objective information about the political life of a country is presented; that is, facts about politics are given, but opinions are not expressed. Art, on the other hand, is subjective: it reflects emotions and opinions. The great Spanish painter Francisco Goya was perhaps the first truly “political” artist. In his well-known painting The Third of May 1808, he criticized the Spanish government for its misuse of power over people. Over a hundred years later, symbolic images were used in Pablo Picasso’s Guernica to express the horror of war. Meanwhile, on another continent, the powerful paintings of Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros – as well as the works of Alfredo Ramos Martins – depicted these Mexican artists’ deep anger and sadness about social problems.

In the same way, art can reflect a culture’s religious beliefs. For hundreds of years in Europe, religious art was almost the only type of art that existed. Churches and other religious buildings were filled with paintings that depicted people and stories from the Bible. Although most people couldn’t read, they could still understand biblical stories in the pictures on church walls.

By contrast, one of the main characteristics of art in the Middle East was (and still is) its absence of human and animal images. This reflects the Islamic belief that statues are unholy. That’s why no figures can be found in or around places of interest in these regions.