Remember the ancient Greek legend of a contest between two great painters to decide which one of them was the better one? Zeuxis painted a still life that was so real that even birds knocked against the painting, hoping to get a bite of the grapes. The King was impressed. He then asked Parrhasius to draw the curtain and reveal what he had painted. Parrhasius smiled, for he knew that he had won the content. The curtains themselves were his painting.

From the earliest cave paintings, which date back to around 13,000 BC, to modern graffiti, the one thing that stands the test of time in these paintings is their ability to appeal to the human sensibility over centuries and nations. The very fact that you smiled at the end of reading the story above indicates that each human being forms a distinct relationship with a painting, whatever his personal reason might be. While the cave paintings might have an aura of mystery and thus appeal to us even today, modern art appeals to us due to its simplicity or the fact that color is given so much prominence.

All the famous painters, from Eyke to Picasso, painted not for money, but as a result of deep emotion, either towards a theme or a medium. Leonardo da Vinci left only 30-odd works complete. He constantly shifted between sculpting, painting and procrastinating. Vincent Van Gogh committed suicide out of frustration that no one understood his work. Picasso dabbled in styles and invested cubism, or the art of painting in geometric shapes. It is these sentiments that eventually reflect in their paintings. And this is why they appeal to us even today.