The arts and politics  

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:"All efforts to render [[politics]] [[aesthetic]] culminate in one thing: [[war]]". --Walter Benjamin via “[[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility]]” :"All efforts to render [[politics]] [[aesthetic]] culminate in one thing: [[war]]". --Walter Benjamin via “[[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility]]”
-'''Political art''' includes anything from [[anarcho-punk]] to [[culture jamming]], from [[political literature]] to [[social realism]], from [[political cinema]] to [[protest art]].+'''Political art''' includes anything from [[anarcho-punk]] to [[culture jamming]], from [[political literature]] to [[social realism]], from [[political cinema]] to [[protest art]]. The term [[artivist]] come to mind. Think the [[Notre-Dame Affair]] and ''[[The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]]''.
-The term [[artivist]] come to mind. Think the [[Notre-Dame Affair]] and [[The Revolution of Modern Art and the Modern Art of Revolution]].+
-It is the opposite from [[art for art's sake]].+It is the opposite from [[aestheticism]] and [[art for art's sake]].

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Les Poires, as sold separately to cover the expenses of a trial of Le Charivari
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Les Poires, as sold separately to cover the expenses of a trial of Le Charivari

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art, politics, music and politics, aestheticization of violence, art vandalism
"All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war". --Walter Benjamin via “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility

Political art includes anything from anarcho-punk to culture jamming, from political literature to social realism, from political cinema to protest art. The term artivist come to mind. Think the Notre-Dame Affair and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

It is the opposite from aestheticism and art for art's sake.


Contents

Artistic revolution and cultural/political revolutions

The role of fine art has been to simultaneously express values of the current culture while also offering criticism, balance, or alternatives to any such values that are proving no longer useful. So as times change, art changes. If changes were abrupt they were deemed revolutions. The best artists have predated society's changes due not to any prescenience, but because sensitive perceptivity is part of their 'talent' of seeing.

Artists have had to 'see' issues clearly in order to satisfy their current clients, yet not offend potential patrons. For example, paintings glorified aristocracy in the early 1600s when leadership was needed to nationalize small political groupings, but later as leadership became oppressive, satirization increased and subjects were less concerned with leaders and more with more common plights of mankind.

Examples of revoutionary art in conjunction with cultural/political movements:

Artistic revolution of style

But not all artistic revolutions were political. Revolutions of style have also abruptly changed the art of a culture. For example, when the careful, even tedious, art techniques of French neo-classicism became oppressive to artists living in more exuberant times, a stylistic revolution known as "Impressionism" vitalized brush strokes and color. Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir burst onto the French culture, effecting a revolution with a style that has become commonplace today.

An artistic revolution can be begun by a single artist, but unless that artist gains some understanding, he becomes an iconoclast. The first Abstract Expressionists were considered madmen to give up their brushes and rely on the sheer force of energy to leave an image, but then the import of atomic bombs, all atomic energy, became realized, and art found no better way of expressing its power. Jackson Pollock is the artist best known for starting that revolution.

Marx and ideology

Marxist art theory

During the mid-20th century art historians embraced social history by using critical approaches. The goal is to show how art interacts with power structures in society. One critical approach that art historians used was Marxism. Marxist art history attempted to show how art was tied to specific classes, how images contain information about the economy, and how images can make the status quo seem natural (ideology). Well-know Marxist art theorists include Clement Greenberg, Meyer Schapiro, Arnold Hauser, and T.J. Clark.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The arts and politics" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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