All throughout history, societal change has impacted art. The Greeks painted emperors onto vases, Christians painted their newly-murdered messiah on chapel walls, Warhol painted copy after copy of the same can of soup to represent his American culture. But we live in an age where change has never been so rapid, nor so radical. Change is coming quickly and explosively to societies all across America and the world. We have experienced, in the past few decades, not just societal revolutions but a massive technological revolution. So how will contemporary art evolve with all of this rapid change to influence it?

“What I’ve observed in the art world is many artists truly pushing the limit, creating things you might see and wonder ‘is that art?'” says Sandra Hildreth, a local artist with a passion for painting Adirondack scenery.

I asked Sandra if she thought art might progress farther away from natural scenes, as people’s worldviews are quickly shrinking to the size of a phone screen. She replied, “Yes, it certainly could be that our modern, urban, technological world has pulled artists away from a focus on nature. Think about it — there are many more people who just see buildings when they walk around outside than those who live in places like the Adirondacks.”

However, Sandra’s observation that art regularly cycles through topics offers some hope for the landscape lover. “Art seems to go through cycles of popularity. A particular style will take over and dominate taste for a certain period — like French Impressionism — and then a new style, often very different, will come to the forefront as the younger artists seek something different they can do. In the 20th century we had a lot of dramatically new art styles: Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Super Realism and more.”

So if artists tend to rebel against the latest wave of popular art, it seems probable that art will cycle through periods focused more and then less on technology. Of course, advances in technology affect art simply by introducing new methods to use for making it. Digital art has evolved incredibly over the past few decades, from Photoshop to 3-D printing, so much so that it may even be replaced in popularity by the use of artificial intelligence to create art. Photoshopped pictures could be completely replaced by AI-generated ones, which take mere minutes to produce and which create alarmingly realistic images. Students in art classes have begun creating assignments using aid from artificial intelligence, as art teachers begin adapting to the rapidly changing landscape of materials available to them. Last spring at Saranac Lake High School, students were assigned a project in which they had to generate art by describing the things they wanted to a bot which would then create it. This assignment was the first of its kind at the school, and was done as a way of acclimating students to the technology they would likely be forced to encounter in the years to come.

But how well can artificial intelligence truly create art? Isn’t art about the artist connecting to the viewer on an emotional level?

“I choose subject matter for paintings in many different ways, but ultimately the subject has caught my attention somehow, made me feel joy (or sadness), made me feel something… So I guess I am painting things in such a way that I hope viewers will feel what I felt,” Sandra says, describing her impetus to paint.

It’s a seriously concerning thought, that our society may be moving towards a place where art is no longer about sharing emotions. It seems possible that if we are reckless with technology, it could take us there. But in some ways, our advancing society has the potential to actually take art to even more emotional places.

Many have studied the Renaissance in school, and will remember those examples of pre-Renaissance paintings: A dark, flat canvas with an image of an angel or holy figure staring dispassionately out at the audience. The Medieval Ages are a great time to turn to when examining emotions in art, as there were hardly any present. Most of the art created was done less out of emotion and more to serve a purpose to the church, or pay respect to figures the artists valued. Most paintings depicted a holy figure raising two fingers as a dull halo circled their head. The outlying pieces were usually depictions of especially intense scenes from the Bible; this was the only place you tended to feel any emotion coming through the canvas. Yet modern-day society is evolving to address emotional and mental health on a huge level (and is obviously much less focused on religion). So while technology and artificial intelligence have the ability to push art towards a cold, clinical place, our progressive society also has the ability to bring it back. It’s possible mainstream art will adapt more around technology, and it’s even possible that artists will be replaced by AI’s copies of their work, but I believe art will live on in the outlying pieces. Just as in the Middle Ages, when there were a few brave depictions of emotional, human scenes, I believe artists will continue to challenge the norm and create art based on real emotion. And I will continue to believe this, because I don’t want to consider a world in which art exists without meaning.

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Lucy Thill is a senior at Saranac Lake High School whose work has appeared in “Wild Words,” Local ADK Mag, Anarkiss Zine and elsewhere.