Does classical traditional art have more substances than Vik Mumiz's Waste Land - Research Paper Example

The area is controlled by drug cartels, and occasional dead bodies are stashed in the dump. More than three thousand pickers of recyclable materials live on the site in makeshift shacks containing appliances gathered from the dump. These people live in families of small groups, and teenage girls raising small children. This piece of art depicts the state of the society by showing the current situation of the low class individuals. Classical traditional art was used to show the culture, sexuality, and the state of the society.

This makes it contain more substance than the film by Vik Muniz. Renaissance films, paintings, and sculptures are marked by renewal of classical motifs and subjects of art (Thomson-Jones, 20). These themes were evident in the 17th century when artists represented a rigid classism. Classical art exhibits a preference for order, beauty, harmony, and completeness by representing nature according to an artist’s observation (Aristides, 10). Traditional art requires a great deal of skills and methods for its production that have been lost in the modern art.

This art is manifested in painting, crafting, and sculpturing that makes objects that gratify and ennoble their viewers (Gazda, 8). Artists of classical traditional art produced images that created a perception, narration, and visualization of culture, society, and self (Janson and Anthony, 15). Current artists depict the nature of civilization, post-modernism, politics, culture, and sexuality (Kennedy and Emily, 18). Muniz has used garbage and unusual substances in the dump as his media. The film is set in a dump site where trucks deposit several tones of refuse.

Catadores collect recyclable materials from the garbage to make their living (Kino, 2010). Their houses are furnished by appliances and furniture collected from the dump. When Muniz first visits the site, he sees a site crowded with dump trucks and workers, as flocks of scavenger birds hover around. Garbage collectors and monkeys climb over mountains of colorful garbage looking for items that can be sold. Muniz has used these objects to create his art for the social project in the dump. Classical traditional art usually used wood, political figures, heroes and other popular figures as media.

These figures gave this form of art more meaning in the society than the use of garbage and strange substances as media for the art. The individuals may be considered to be dregs of the Brazilian society, but Muniz paints them as survivors who have endured the difficult living conditions of the dump. Some of the garbage collectors have lived in the dump for more than two generations. They have survived and gotten used to the stench emanating from the rotting garbage (Kino, 2010). The catadores are considered to be unfit and rejected by the society, but Muniz portrays them as loving, healthy, and fit to run families.

However, this film shows the simplicity of life in the dump for the garbage collectors. Classical traditional art is a masterpiece of intelligence and complexity (Thomson-Jones, 26). The intelligence and complexity envelopes the main theme of the art and penetrates deep sections of the society. A single piece of traditional art can carry several themes that are present in the current society. The simplicity of wasteland makes it incomparable to classical art as it addresses only the hard living conditions of the dump.

Classical traditional art is based upon the rediscovery or the reaffirmation of the traditions