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    Essay by Artist Mark Vallen - Why All Art Is Political

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    WHY ALL ART IS POLITICAL

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    Essay by Artist Mark Vallen - Why All Art Is Political

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    SamonaMartins
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    WHY ALL ART IS POLITICAL

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    Essay by Artist Mark Vallen - Why All Art is Political

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    WHY ALL ART IS POLITICAL

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    104 views2 pages

    Essay by Artist Mark Vallen - Why All Art Is Political

    Uploaded by

    SamonaMartins
    WHY ALL ART IS POLITICAL

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    22/08/2017 Essay by artist Mark Vallen - Why all art is political

    WELCOME TO MARK VALLEN'S "ART FOR A Subscribe to the Art For A Change
    CHANGE" WEBSITE Newsletter
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    WHY ALL ART IS POLITICAL


    Mark Vallen - October 2004
    www.art-for-a-change.com
    In June of 2004 the New York Foundation for the Arts conducted an
    online poll concerning people's attitudes regarding "political art". Of the
    3000 or so individuals who responded, around 69% voted that
    "political art is boring", 4% thought "politics should be kept out of art",
    and 27% appreciated "political art".

    But what is "political art" and who defines it?

    Surely the great works of Ben Shahn, Diego Rivera, and Kthe Kollwitz
    are masterpieces of subjective commentary and observation on the
    state of the world. Are those works boring? Should the artists have
    restricted themselves to painting non-controversial subjects and left
    political concerns to the politicians? Would humanity be richer if that
    had been the case?

    When Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling for the Vatican,
    was the process free of politics? When Europe's 19th century classical
    artists created exotic "orientalist" paintings of Arabs during a period of
    intense Western colonization of the region, were those images free of a
    political viewpoint? When Nelson Rockefeller referred to modern
    abstract expressionism as "free enterprise painting", was he not
    offering a political definition of art?

    History provides abundant examples of how social relations impact art.


    Traditionally the church, state, and wealthy patrons have funded the
    arts in order to increase their political power and prestige. Clearly that
    paradigm is overloaded with political relationships. But today it is
    largely market forces that determine the success or failure of art, and
    who among us will declare capitalism's various mechanisms to be free
    of politics? Since labor and commerce are realms understood to be
    political spheres, then art, which is inextricably bound to those fields,
    is automatically part of a political process.

    Content or message notwithstanding, artists manipulate and transform


    raw materials into art. The fact that those supplies are created from
    the toil of others makes for a political construct. Who makes your art
    materials, how much are they paid, and under what conditions do they
    work? Seen in such a context, can any work of art truly be above
    politics?

    Artists do not create in a vacuum, they are indisputably coupled to the


    society and times in which they work. It may well be that an artist can
    realize aesthetic triumphs while ignoring society, but willful unconcern
    regarding social matters is also a political position.

    But what about the transcendent qualities of art, doesn't that


    universality place the arts soaring above the corrupt world of politics
    and the vulgar materialism of society? Doesn't the spirituality of art
    keep it free from the constraints of avarice? Doesn't the mystical
    aspect of art place it above earthly and mundane concerns? Yes and
    no. Art will always strive to be free of society's manacles, and it will
    forever serve as a conduit to humanity's higher self, but the questions
    posed here imply an intrinsic relationship between art and material

    http://www.art-for-a-change.com/content/essays/political.htm 1/2
    22/08/2017 Essay by artist Mark Vallen - Why all art is political

    reality. It is an ironclad fact that an artist must eat and pay rent, and
    so it is also an irreducible fact that we are bound to political
    arrangements.

    Essay by Mark Vallen All rights reserved.


    MORE ESSAYS BY MARK VALLEN
    THE BALLOT AND THE PALETTE ON THE DEATH OF JOHNNY RAMONE
    Essay on the 2004 US presidential election A punk rock pioneer passes away
    LEAVING THE 21st CENTURY
    The Situationists and the banalization culture
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