Majority of the educated population comes from the middle class background. Same goes for most painters. Paintings as we know in the past were more of a luxury; it was more evident to see paintings of portraits, religious and scenery in a palace but not in the living rooms of ordinary people. Art was a medium, showing off wealth and power.
The question I ask to myself is how did art reach the middle class? It was always popular amongst the wealthy, so how did the middle class approach it?
At first without any such research, I pondered over this question and one of the first styles of art that struck my mind was genre paintings. Genre paintings are paintings that depict the everyday life which became popular in Germany. Genre painting was coming to its existence around the Renaissance period. Artists seemed to flinch from the same old historical and religious attachment with art, now for them the satisfaction was painting and being realistic. Since people were even against so much that was going on and as they could relate to these paintings they became popular in their own way.
In today’s world buying art is not just for what is pleasing to the eye but more money oriented. Even art is seen as an investment now. Although art is more of an investment the middle class are not willing to spend their money on it. They may like a work but purchasing it would not be the immediate reaction. Whether this is to do with the awareness about art or just the fact that the average middle class person would prefer spending money elsewhere can be a few reasons; but what is strange is if people during that time and age could form a relationship with art then what makes it so hard for this to happen today?
sources-
sources-
Dyske.com/paper/818
www.blogher.com/middle-class-artmaker
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