With the rise of cancel culture, it’s something that’s got me curious, why are so many works (music, literature, tv shows, etc.) no longer separated from their controversial makers? Is it purely to do with money (e.g. not wanting to give money to people you don’t agree with?) and what about controversial people who are dead? They don’t gain anything, so why isn’t the art separated from the artist? What’s your opinion on this topic?
Art is political.
Not always, not necessarily
There is also lots of popcorn stuff where a problematic artist may work on. Take movies, I hate tom cruise the person, but I love his movies. I’m not spending money on his movies, arr, I wouldn’t, but the movies are a good watch
I’ve always hated that argument that “all art is political, because the existence of the art, the freedom to create it, the ability to share it, etc is all political”, because it fails to acknowledge anything specific about the artwork in question being political. By the same logic literally anything existing is political because its ability to exist, or to be destroyed is political. But some random rock 78 miles off the shores of California in the Pacific isn’t going to be meaningfully political in any way that matters to almost anyone ever. Therefore I think it’s fine to consider some things (such as some works of art) not meaningfully political, also often just called “not political”.
I think some silly pieces of art can be reasonably interpreted as political in some regards (drawing dicks around potholes), but sometimes it’s just there because someone thought it would be funny/look nice/was a mistake.
Art is interpretive. Therefore it can be interpreted as political.
Spoken like someone whose freedom of expression and creativity has never been criminalized.
Oh don’t start…
It is though. Pretending it isn’t is also a choice with a political motive. You don’t necessarily have to act on every feeling it gives you though, which is kind of freeing once you learn to enjoy art like that
What about caveman hand paintings? Are they not art? What politics did they hold?
Not all art is political, and that’s just a fact. Yes, some art is political — I don’t disagree with that. I’m just saying, not all art is. Just because people (politicians) try to twist it into something political doesn’t always make it so.
They were to tell stories and communicate ideas of community, shared identity, and warnings. They were political.
May I ask, what’s your specific definition of ‘politics’?
Even the very fundamental beginnings of the term “politics” is rooted in how we relate to each other.
No, I said what’s your definition, not the one you’ve just pulled off google
Here is my personal comment on it. Do you think I would pull a definition of politics that I don’t agree with to bolster my point of view here?
All art is political, because it depends on the politics of the society it was created.
First we need to agree on a definition of political, in general I think a good definition is “dealing with the structure, organization, and administration of the state”.
So, a cave painting, just like any art that shows you how people live in a society is exposing the structure, organization and possibly administration of the state, which is the very definition of politics.
Here’s the thing, any art is either based on reality or fictitious. Art based on reality like portraits or biographies are political because they show you the society as it is. On the other hand fictitious art shows you failures or limitations of the society they were written in, or sometimes they offer metaphors to draw parallels or point at stuff in the society they were written.
If you think art is not political I ask you to find me some piece of art that does not deal with the structure, organization or administration of the state.
Since Velma was quick and already pretty well defined what we know about cave paintings, I’d actually like to add on to your question since this is one of my favorite topics.
There’s a lot of art out there that was created because artists set out to create something that isn’t specifically political. That’s a little harder to escape politics on because the artists had a motive in mind when they wanted to pursue that goal. Something of note though that was in popular discourse around four years ago though was Zombie Formalism which was shown to be created as a genre of painting used as fiat currency for the wealthiest people to exchange and launder money. While that context is pretty political, if you only look at the intent of the artists they were trying to make art that said as little as possible in order to not draw any attention and be an effective form of untaxed currency. That could be a plausible bet, depending on how you personally invoke Death of the Author
This was a good read, thank you for linking it!
My pleasure, thanks for bearing with me through all the typos in that reply