“Art Is a Lie That Brings Us Closer to the Truth” – Pablo Picasso – Evaluate This Statement

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“Art is a lie that brings us closer to the truth” – Pablo Picasso – evaluate this statement: The Arts, a way of knowing, is a diverse ra nge of human creative practices. It has already influenced the human race from the very beginning. As for what art is, it is anything one makes. There are various forms of art for example, music, theater, film, painting, sculpting, and more. Surrealism is an art movement that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, and can be expressed with paintings. The paintings produced are a mix of realism and fantasy. There are two types of truth theories that can be applied to this art. One is the Correspondence theory and the Coherence theory. Lies as defined in the dictionary, is “an intentionally false statement”. But this painting cannot really be counted as a statement so anything that is not true shall be considered an untruth. Surrealism painting is composed of lies that are also capable of bringing both the artist and the audience closer to the truth. In the painting above, it shows a boat with butterfly wings as sails, painted by the artist Salvador Dali. The things in the painting that are untrue are the butterflies. This statement is true because according to the correspondence theory, a truth is when something has corresponded to a fact. And a fact is that there are no butterflies that large. The butterflies are a lie because they do not correspond to the facts of real life. Though this argument can be countered by whether or not one knows this is a “fact” the statement that it is untrue can be justified with perception, one of the ways of knowing. Using our perception, we can conclude that the butterflies are untrue, however Herbert Read 1972 – the Meaning of Art said that “The artist pours his knowledge into works of art.” Knowledge can also be described as justified true belief, therefore
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