Art And Politics
Podcast Season 2 Episode 3, Welcome to episode 2.3 — Today I want to talk about Art and Politics. All of my Podcasts are intentionally short because I get bored listening to hour long podcasts. I apologize in advance for reading a script and not sounding like I’m having a conversation with you but I find if I don’t follow a written script I end up saying “Uh” way too much. The script for each episode is published on my Patreon page [https://www.patreon.com/yourartdude] prior to each broadcast release and the scripts are also published on my Medium page [https://yourartdude.medium.com] following the broadcast. I hope you will follow me and support me on my Patreon page. See all my links at the end.
Just a quick note about my social media pages, my Instagram was recently hacked so I now have a new Instagram page [https://www.instagram.com/official_yourartdude]. Ok, I’m going to jump right in.
I understand that there are subjects no longer taught in schools like history/herstory, civics and how to read and write English properly. The Arts are practically sidelined to being taught on an individual basis through tutors and education centers which focus on particular fields and goals. I have been saying for the past 20 years that schools now need to be teaching our young people year round with quarterly week-long vacations off from school because there is so much more to learn in our digital age but that doesn’t mean we should have stopped teaching very important subjects such as history/herstory.
I found this need for year round education to be evident in my own education because when I completed my education I discovered there was something important missing. While I was taught by highly qualified artists in terms of technique, using new tools and methods in the creation process and ways in which to blend these together I think I was taught it was equally important in how to think like an Artist. The missing part was that as an Artist going out into the world, I was a business. That is the Capitalist part. Not just my Art was a business but I was a business. In art school, I was not taught how to run myself like a business. I WAS fortunately taught Art History.
This is where I want to begin talking about the historical intersection of Politics, Religions and Money with Art. Partially due to the geopolitical situations globally but I want to discuss how Politics began using the Arts as tools to promote the agendas of people who want to distract the rest of us from everything these people are doing to the world and to us, and relate it to now. You know the saying “Never mind the man behind the curtain” from the film Wizard of Oz, we now live in a world in which so many of us have some education, many of us at least know HOW to read so we can understand this curtain metaphor.
Ancient and then modern civilizations used the Arts by building massive monuments and temples and palaces, also sculptures and paintings to distract the rest of us from the leaders attempts to control us while they amassed vast fortunes. Ancient and then modern religions used the Arts in the same ways for the same purpose. Everything changes while Nothing changes.
I see a parallel of our time during this Digital or Information Revolution to the Industrial Revolution where governments and corporations use the Arts to promote their agendas and distract the rest of us. A sterling example is how the Russian Czars, the Soviet dictators and the modern Russian state use the Bolshoi Ballet as a tool. The same parallel can be made where Capitalist Corporations do much the same using the Print Media and then the Social Media to sway public opinion.
The Industrial Revolution produced seismic changes in the lives of everyone where we all became conspicuous consumers and changed how we lived by making us conform to the industrialist’s constructs of employment, entertainment and sleeping in a single 6 to 8 hour period. In the Arts of the time, Romanticism was a reaction to what was happening and focused on emotions and the individual but the creatives of that time still had to voice their reactions in a slightly obscured or veiled way because the vehicles to showcase their work and subsequently make a living from their Art in a Capitalist system had yet to be realized fully. All the same the Romantic Art period saw a blossoming of creativity in the fields of Poetry, Painting, Literature, Music and Theatre and also the ability of the masses to consume the Art being produced.
The Digital/Information Revolution is producing changes in much the same way while giving the Artists of today more freedom to create and distribute their Art and make a living from their Art. The downside of this Revolution is losing vital instruction in schools about how we got here and how to communicate in clear language which is spelled correctly. It is an interesting dichotomy in gaining access to vast historical information while losing the basics of how this information is taught.
A hundred years ago, the average household owned around 30 works of Art which was displayed on their walls and people frequently had family outings to Museums, Art Galleries, Plays, Concerts and Poetry Readings. Today walls hold family photos and many of our experiences are through Social Media while sitting on our sofas. The “News” of those times actually reported the events of the day often leaving the interpretation of those events to their audience. I don’t mean to say that those reporting the news didn’t impose their commentary on events, but they often allowed their audience to form their own opinions in a more informed way. Today they just want to rant about how they feel about events leaving little time to actually report what is happening.
Today the wold isn’t perfect by any definition and there are so many who don’t have enough food or water and there are so many who don’t have the ability to voice their opinions and concerns without fear of reprisals. In spite of everything many of us have gained, we should also consider everything which has been lost. Perhaps all of this is part of the plan designed by Politicians and CEOs which is continually being reinterpreted and rewritten and redisguised.
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