The Philosophy of Existentialism and its Effect on Contemporary Art

Abstract

The twentieth century is the time that many cultural schools have appeared and the advent of different political, economic, and social developments world wide such as first and second communism war, cold war and, so on each had its effect. One of these schools of literature is the existentialism that could be described and examined through different aspects such as literature, theatre, cinema, and painting. Existentialism views the world in a special way and quests kind of human to human and his existential concept. In Existential philosophers’ perspective, the most fundamental existing truth is human being and the human existence is separate and have precedence over its nature, despite the whole universe. Existentialism theories involve studying different ways of being and this special definition forms the backgrounds for all existentialism’s theories and thoughts and this philosophy have a profound relation to modern art and literature and ties it to aesthetics contemplation. One of the successful instances of art and thought exchange in movie and philosophy is the connection between modern cinema and existentialism’s thoughts. Thinking profoundly about the existence is the distinguishing feature of modern filmmakers and existentialism philosophers. The present study aimed to research on art and existentialism school through library data collection in a descriptive-analytical method. In the view point of existentialism thinkers, since the art action is one of early instances of human free activities, then it is also considered as one of the super modes of revealing of the what the world is about and based on this the existential approach to the art, the arts are classified based on their revealing nature.