Does art depict life or does life depict art?

In my personal perspective, the art depicts life.

The art is from the life, and what it does is to reflect the life in another way. Eugene Onegin, one of Pushkin’s most famous works, is really a good example of my point of view. In this novel, the main character Onegin shares a similar life with its author, Pushkin. Both of them are born in the upper-class family, grow up in the good circumstance, get well education. Both of them have grand dreams, want to change something, and world-weary. Additionally, the time cost for Pushkin was really long. He did not finish the whole story in several months, but seven years. He actually did not have a planned structure of the novel when he started. What he did was to publish the novel section by section, and see what would happen as he experienced more. Therefore, in these characters he created, we are able to see the reflection of him. Not only the people in literature get the inspiration from the life, many painters were strongly influenced by it as well. One typical example is Vincent Van Gogh, who is the most well known painter in 19th century. The topic in his paintings was really related to his personal experience. The Sunflowers, a series of paintings, reflected his glorification to love, his pursuit to the freedom, and his idiographic comprehension of life when he was so depressed about the life he had at that period.

General speaking, art usually depicts life since life is the best source for artisans to get inspiration.