Art is not some free floating agent miraculously cut loose from the common life of social and historical realities.
Art is political only in as much as it strives to come to grips with underlying metaphysical structures which underpin any number of political claims.
When art is joined to politics of the moment it becomes a fade away affair notable only for its connection to the historical incident that necessitated it.
Li Huayi is a fantastic Chinese painter whose earlier artistic career illustrates something of what I mean by the above statement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHizMRo_T_M
In counterpoint, here is a brilliant painter who worked happily enough in collusion with any regime that happened to be in power…Jacques-Louis David. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJVCtPrJ7NQ
A minor though more pernicious variant of this opportunism is evident when a dominant theme, meme, hashtag or fascination – that is to say, any more or less transient issue with which we distract ourselves, including all preoccupation with celebrity and entertainment – is transformed into a visual conceit for profitable consumption; a kind of meager, cynical intellectual affectation with a shelf life comparable to the brevity and relevance of the very thing that caused it to come into being in the first place.
Whereas the former may be categorized as work done under the gun (I’m not talking about speed of production here ladies and gentlemen) the latter is plainly novelty capriciously exploited in the hopes of getting ones hook into the public imagination for the sake of a quick cash or opinion grab.
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