Hello, hello my friends! Focus your minds and get ready for something incredibly exciting! Today, we won’t delve into dark caves or dense forests, nor will we discuss emptiness and endings, battles and survival. This time, I have a more intriguing topic for you: art! Mon Dieu! Put on your berets, gather your paints, canvases, and brushes because our subject of the week is paintings! (“Hmm, does this guy even realize that France isn’t the only country with artists?” – disgruntled artists from around the globe)
Paintings in Minecraft are decorative items measuring up to 4×4 blocks, placed on walls, and every time they catch your eye, thoughts about human existence and life in this world inevitably arise. Why do vines explode? Why do zombie pigmen exist while regular ones do not? Why are melon blocks in Minecraft Pocket Edition square, yet the slices are curved? Can an Enderman jump? What do chorus fruits resemble? Why doesn’t anyone want to discuss art with me until three in the morning?
Paintings were introduced in Minecraft Bedrock during the development phase of the Java version known as Indev. Initially, they consisted of eight planks surrounding a wool block, but later the planks were replaced with sticks. There were originally just 19, but now there are a total of 26! I think that’s enough to create your own gallery!
It’s time to meet the person who made it possible for us to use paintings as decor in builds. Kristoffer Zetterstrand, the creator of most of these artworks, is a remarkable Swedish artist inspired by video games, integrating various elements into his surrealistic pieces. The paintings in Minecraft were based on real works by Zetterstrand, which he then transformed into pixelated versions.
You can place paintings on the sides of solid blocks. Once you put one on any surface, it checks how much space is available around it, and based on that, a painting of appropriate size is automatically selected. If you don’t like the painting, you can keep removing it until you find one that fits your artistic vision.
Humans likely painted long before they were called humans. Most cave paintings date back to the Paleolithic era (25,000–8,000 BC), though some are much older or younger. Researchers studying the Gabar Mun Cave in northern Australia found that the oldest rock art was created over 28,000 years ago, while the youngest was less than a hundred years old.
Earlier this year, a study claimed that one of the oldest examples of cave art in Spain dates back 64,000 years. This predates the arrival of humans in Europe by 20,000 years, suggesting it was created by Neanderthals. Engraved shells made by another of our humanoid ancestors, Homo erectus, date back 500,000 years. However, similar to video games, experts disagree on whether these engravings can be properly classified as “art.”
It is believed that painting was created for practical purposes. For instance, to illustrate what needed to be done or how a certain structure should look. Some argue that early painting was used for hunting and rituals. Before going out to hunt, people would draw animals, believing that this way they captured the soul of their prey, making it easier to catch its flesh. Others suggest that art served to record history and events, essentially acting as a ledger. Many years have passed since then, and today art has expanded its boundaries. To make things easier, people have developed numerous styles: from sculpture to industrial design (like an ordinary chair), photojournalism, and fine arts, which are primarily valued for their aesthetic, creative, and intellectual content.
Today, art represents a vast industry operating across many layers of society, worth approximately $63 billion in 2017. Yet, people often perceive art merely as the creation of beautiful, aesthetic, useful, and simultaneously simple objects. Surely each of you has attempted to build your home in Minecraft Bedrock, enhancing the surroundings, considering every detail to ensure everything looks as beautiful and neat as possible. Some even obsess over the color of the sheep living in their flock. So, this too is a creative process and the act of creating something beautiful and unique; therefore, you can confidently call yourself an artist!
