The Collective-I thought this would be appropriate for what we are doing here. Just ignore the fact I am writing this for class.

If we are to parallel the history of economy and social development with the progression of art form, then it should be said that the most contemporary form of art is the “most developed and complex” art form to be born to date; it is a form, in all its most brilliant and satisfactory varieties, that gives “insights into the structure and the relations of production of all the vanished social formations”—to make it applicable in this particular case, the previous conceptualizations of art. It could be said, then, that art in the present form is a collection of all previous things that have survived and helped to create the current mode of art. Marx gives the example of the human anatomy; whereas “the human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the ape” (Marx, 105). This is useful in understanding what remnants of the previous forms of art has remained a part of art, now. To use the example of the human anatomy and the evolution of our species, the “intimations of higher development…can be understood only after the higher development is already know” (Marx, 105).

It is imperative to the understanding of what we have now, to be aware of what “nuances have developed explicit significance within it” (Marx, 105). Art of now has pieces of what was. It would be almost impossible to discover a form of art, or any structure of social order, that hasn’t developed out of something formerly believed to be the most desirable or supreme order. That is not to suggest that an art cannot be fresh and appear to be new, but to recognize that most all human action and creation is a product of itself. If we are simply, to look at the evolution of man from ape to a “I think; therefore, I am “ sort of being we cannot deny the significance of the former species and what impact and lending value it has on the successive species. This can be true of anything, really. From one moment to the next, we process information and make choices based on what variables are or have become a part of us and that next moment have developed a different, but collective, understanding of what is.

A difficulty does arise when making this claim and, that is, what exact art form in this historical moment can we say is the most complex and developed form. That difficulty is art takes its form in many ways across a myriad of medians. So, in order to proceed with this accusation, we must begin to define what is the most applicable form of art to label supreme. And that is not an easy task for one must take into account all of the social influxes of our moment. It may even be a task that has any amount of answers. So, let’s take a specific form and trace its pieces of the past to ultimately define what art is at our current historical moment. And that’s not say that the aim is to ignore a specific median or create any sort of law in regards to what art can be, but the goal is to establish what is the significance of art in our time. Art has always been a display of the human experience and the question becomes: what of our time has influenced art and how does that art accurately reflect our collective human experience?