Art and Politics Revisited

The talk of the town at least in the news media and it seems also in the social media are the dueling personalities Trump and Sanders. And the sides are lined up: those tooting for Donald and those rallying around Bernie. Sometimes they are shouting at each other while at other times to their own choirs.

Imagine if the art world could stir up such controversy. Occasionally an installation will cause an elected official to bolt out of the exhibition space in a huff with cameras flashing. And the artist is headlined as the culprit undermining public sensibilities but not the provocateur that he wishes to be provoking each viewer to think and think hard about his society. This happens intermittently.

But every four years flamboyant politicians usually dressed in business attire will capture the publics' attention with their grandstanding, vitriol, bombastic rhetoric, and faux pas. Each of them drives the other into a mad frenzy towards the political extremes. And the artist is sidelined as the crowd gathers before the cameras around a presidential candidate or two or three or more. But that artist just might be soaking in the whole drama to prepare works parodying the folly of ambition, of the grab for power, and of false promises – broken arrows turning away crestfallen, disillusioned supporters who gravitate to the next contender who throws his hat in the ring. And the folly resumes in another four years.

Throughout our modern times we see the artwork from its creators who are fatigued by the follies of political brinkmanship and of the ever gullible crowds who look for their deliverance in one individual. We see this in the artwork of George Grosz who despaired over Germany's turn to totalitarianism in the first half of the Twentieth Century. And we see it today in the present form of the Art Brut movement that hearkens back to the Dadaists near the start of the last century. And they constitute a steady stream as Outsider Art that is, outside of the mainstream mirroring ourselves

Does their art constitute a satire of our current ills that differ little from the unease and maladies plaguing late Nineteenth Century Europe? Or is do they merely explore symbols seeking their core meanings? Or could their art constitute a collapse of the signifier into itself – symbols devoid of any external meaning – a preoccupation with a non-lingual inner world? All of the above you might say. Perhaps you are right. Then this by this introversion of the symbolic that at times parodies our world may come new references with their accompanying meanings. Or is it just a retreat from the nonsense put forth by the press – their preoccupation with the inanities of our politicians?

Click Here for More Information