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 prescIence, 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 17th century 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.
In its origins and its first golden age, no art owes quite as much to state power as French painting does. It was in the age of absolute monarchy launched by Louix XIV in the 17th century that the likes of Poussin and Le Brun put France in the forefront of European art. Versailles found its stately mirror in the powerful idea of classicism – a painting style, enduring in later artists like Ingres, whose austerity and grandeur express the authority of a world where Jove is very much in his throne.
Examples of revoutionary art in conjunction with cultural/political movements:
- Trotskyist & Diego Rivera
- Black Panther Party & Emory Douglas
- Cuban Poster art
- Social realism & Ben Shahn
- Feminist art & the Guerrilla Girls
- Industrial Workers of the World & Woody Guthrie
- Revolutionary Tides
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Famous quotes containing the words artistic, revolution, cultural, political and/or revolutions:
“To “give style” to one’s character—a rare and noble art! Those practice it who compass all that their natures present as strengths and weaknesses and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one appears as art and reason and even weakness enchants the eye.”
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“The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.”
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“If we study nature attentively, alike in its great revolutions and in its minutest works, it is impossible not to admit enchantment—giving the word its fullest meaning. Man can create no force; he can but use the only existing force, which includes all others, namely, Motion—the incomprehensible Breath of the sovereign maker of the universe.”
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