1. Dana Pierce Shares A Look Into the Wonderful World Of Painting And How It Has Shaped And Changed The World We Live In<br />Painting has as many styles and different types of expression as there are colors in the universe. Everything from the surface you paint on to the type of brush you use to the force and direction you apply paint to canvas, wood or paper has an impact on the final painting. As an artistic art form, painting is celebrated and dates back to ancient times. In fact, the oldest known paintings are believed to be 32,000 years old and are at the Grotte Chauvet in France. The earliest known evidence of painting was discovered in two rock shelters in Northern Australia and is believed to be 60,000 years old. Painting has been around for almost as long as the human race and digital revolution or no digital revolution - it is here to stay. <br />Much of what the world recognizes to be great art or great paintings are from Western cultures. This is not because the painting of these cultures is better than Eastern cultures but is due to the simple fact that until Modern times, Eastern and Western cultures didn’t often intersect. Today museum curators and art historians study art and painting on a global basis. They are no longer restricted to what is happening in their country alone, or their continent alone. This is also reflected in culture and the globalization we’ve seen happening over the past twenty years. Painting, like art, is a reflection of the painter and the culture in which it exists. In the western cultures oil painting and watercolors have a long tradition and complex styles and subject matters. In eastern cultures, ink paintings have traditionally been the dominant art form. <br />Photography has had a major impact on painting. Before photography, paintings were as much a record of society, or of a family who commissioned portraits to commemorate special events as they were art. As photography has become more advanced, paintings have lost some of their historical purposes of providing a record of the world. In the twentieth century, art movements became more innovative and less traditional. This can especially be seen in the paintings of the Cubist and Dadaist movements. Compare the works of Picasso and Salvador Dali to DaVinci and Renoir and you don’t see many similarities, except in that they both use paints. One set of painters utilized the abstract method popular in their society while the other set used the realism popular in their time period. <br />As society has advanced and we’ve seen a blending together of art and technology so too has the focus of paintings and their culturally significance shifted. There is less value placed on technical ability and realism and more emphasis placed on concept. Evolution of culture and the advent of digital photography have had a great impact on painting, artists and the art world alike. <br />