art is an expression using cultural symbols. Look at the art of the Northwest Coast culture area. Chances are you probably won't understand it, in the sense you can describe symbols an know their meaning within the culture these represent. Art is form of culture as poems are an express meaning using cultural symbols.

Few would deny an apparently obvious articulation between art and culture yet any understanding of this relationship clearly hinges on what we mean by ‘Art’ and what we perceive as ‘Culture.’

‘Art’ can have many forms depending on how it is defined and who defines it. In its broadest sense it can bridge not just the plastic manifestations of painting, sculpture, photography and architecture, but also performative acts as diverse as music, dance, drama, comedy, cuisine and even religion. Almost any act can possess aesthetic, artful qualities that involve and move us. We have forms of high-art and popular art; ballet and movies. We have ‘Art’ within the rigours of the academy, in the museum and gallery systems, and folk-art outside those limits. Malraux offers much to consider here, pointing out how ‘Art’ in museums lost it’s domestic, applicable roots and gained a compensatory cerebral justification as a result. Some aesthetic phenomena have their own viral dynamics independent of individual authors, taste and institution; one need only consider how urban myths develop as potent narratives, independently coalescing and spreading, to acknowledge this. Art is so broad a term that it’s a challenge to contemplate it comprehensively.

When considering ‘Culture,’ I’d take Herbert Gans’ points in mind and accept that in any ‘Culture’ there are multiple cultures which contest dominance. Even in the ancient world, trade meant that culture’s were seldom, if ever, constituted by one unified tribe, clan or nationality. Opposing ‘Taste Cultures’ define and redefine each other and themselves, and are used for social control, being both inclusive and exclusionary in influence. This appears to have always been so. Many ancient commentators complain about the dilution of their ‘Culture’ by ‘imported’ cultural forces and practices. This often also has an economic dimension with ’Old-money’ despising the art and taste expressed by ‘New-money.’ This struggle for dominion appears continual, a cycle which reveals one ruling hegemony gradually adapting to, or being reshaped or replaced by, its opponents. From Gans’ viewpoint we might even consider this struggle as one of the driving forces in ‘Culture.’ Dominant cultures are rarely able to recognise the limits and paradoxes of their own mores and tastes, except in hindsight. We rarely perceive our own poor discernment at the time we exercise it. 

Cultures also change as technology changes and science develops. Obviously these then can effect ‘Art’ in terms of manufacture both in how ‘Art’ is made and also in what ‘Art’ actually gets made.

All this suggests that ‘Art’ is informed by every aspect of a society; all forms of language, semiotics, cognition, science, commerce and social self-perception, both high and low culture. Perhaps this thought further fragments the question.

I think that what at first appears to be a seemingly obvious interconnection, when analysed, reveals a multildirectional complexity which almost defies being considered in terms which are themselves formed and limited by the reduction subtly at work in the cultural phenomenon of language.

A fascinating question though.

Many examples can be seen in the transition from classical Hellenistic art to early Christian and Byzantine art. There are many books on the topic. Kiztinger has written on it, so had Thomas Mathews.

Good luck!

Thanks you so much, I'll check it

Art is not a question of cause and effect, but most of all avoid trying to work on top of notions like nation or nation's culture. To think contemporary art they are categories not operative anymore.

Thanks

The reason art of a certain period and place can be identified of that time is that, of course, it is influenced by all the things that are within life and culture at that moment. Everything surrounding us at any point in time influences our life and decisions. It could be said that the greatest art transcends those influences and appears fresh in every era. That is because the greatest art comes from deep within a talented (able to communicate to a high degree within their choice of communication) artist. It is all about human emotion and more often than not that emotion is an unhappy one - a desperate search for the way out. In other words what we require from our greatest artist is, more often than not, a miserable existence. Either way, it is that very deeply felt feeling that we respond to.

Thanks

The relation between culture and art is similar to the relation between science and biology. In both cases, art and biology, each is a specific domain of a much larger domain. Culture is the largest of all and normally it dictates the basic values, concepts, attitudes etc. of the domains it includes. However, sometimes it works the other way round. That is, a great discovery in science or art may change culture itself. Thus Heliocentrism which replaced Geocentirsm, had very profound implications on western culture. Similarly, Impressionism had profound impact on the way we perceive reality and brought to the masses the Kantian idea that we interpret reality, rather than observing it directly "as it is". Sometimes the breakdown of a branch of culture may have profound influence on culture itself changing conceptions and values. Thus, as I have shown in my books Art versus nonart (2003) and The confusion between art and design (2017), so-called modern art (non-representational visual art) is not art at all but quite trivial case of design. That is, modern art is Fake Art and from art Fake Anything was implemented to almost all other domains of culture which will eventually lead to its destruction.

Thanks so much

Thanks so much >Mohsen Jaafarnia

Hi Vural,

Art is a part of culture.

then, why has art become separated from culture?

Why does culture separate art - as "something special"

This could have an historical explanation:

- In the 19 century photography was invented, de technical "objective" worldview.

- seeing a world in that angel made the viewer critical (as it still does today: newsreels, youtube-video's, cellphone pictures taken in war ereas)

By that "different angle" the artists becomes a critical interpretator of his own culture (Adorno).

Even art itself can become a question (Duchamp, Dada, Concept art).

So:

There are two ways in witch art has separated itself form culture, and at the same time has become a dynamic ever changing part of it:

- By the artist: adopting a critical, detached attitude.

- By the public: in the effort of understanding art.

Every effort creates a distance, a certain resistance of a kind - in het 17the century art could be aesthetic powerful, but didn't question culture (society or religion) but was rather a celebration of collective beliefs than a questioning . From the 19 century on art changed in opposite direction - that's what has created this distance art-culture : art 's autonomy.

Best wishes,

Willy

The worldview of the artist is formed in the space of culture, of which art is a part. Art, in turn, becomes a process of unfolding the artist's worldview and its formation. It is hardly possible to talk about the influence of culture on art as a simple connection. Their relationship is non-linear, reciprocal nature, realized in the communication of the artist with himself, with society and with the world. An example of each is an illustration of this relationship

Artistic work IS culture

In a simple word, that is about love to the culture and nature as an example. An artist cannot do his artworks without something in his heart, and that's why affection within is the most important for his creation.

culture is the coding practiced by societies through a series of manifestations that have been the basis of human, environment and material relationships and designs a path of each culture's evolvement based on its own social history and experiential knowledge. As all the senses contribute the progress of it, art itself is also a part of the same progression being a human cultural practice. Any art you take into consideration, is a result of this human cultural progression or evolvement, in response to its own environment or context. I mean, any art is an example of influence of culture, be it folk arts with more clearly visible signs of this relationship or modern art that address to a complex city or metro cultural societies.

Here are a few extracts from my essay on Oswald Spengler's theories - visible at http://www.dlmcn.com/oswaldspengler.html#beg -

"Each [different] culture has its own distinctive soul, which expresses itself in artistic, scientific, political, economic and religious forms....

"Cultural organisms differ in character, ability and aptitude. Thus, calculus and the theory of mathematical functions, soaring Gothic cathedrals and a music based on fugal composition all express characteristically Western passions, which include a love for vast wide-open spaces as well as an intense interest in the distant past and concern for the far future...

"In a contrasting manner, geometry, statics and sculpture were all creative expressions of a mind obsessed with the corporeal and with 'here-now' – that which produced the Ancient Greek Culture. Similarly, algebra, alchemy and arabesque were all manifestations of another unique culture-personality, as also were acupuncture, Taoism and Chinese art. And in the Hindu world, yoga and dance-forms attained levels of sophistication never equalled elsewhere".