Coluber, yes, it seems that the Church fears the arts when it cannot reign them in and/or harness them for ecclesiastical ends. The general intention, as I understand it, is for music, painting, sculpture and architecture to inspire religious sentiment but not to provide other forms of pleasure. This was especially true for the Protestant sects.
In time of war, when people are suffering and starving, art may well have its highest purpose--to inspire people to survive, physically and emotionally. Consider the art, both visual and written, that was produced by the prisoners at Auschwitz and other death camps. These writings and drawings, according to both survivors and those who died, were powerful assertions of the value of the individual in the face of mechanized slaughter. These art works were forbidden; they were very difficult to create and to keep hidden from the Nazis. In these circumstances, the smallest pieces of writing or drawing had immense value. Their very existence was a triumph of the human spirit despite extreme adversity. Most inmates did not have materials for any form of physical expression. But many of these whispered spoken narratives of lives both real and invented. Art seems to be a necessary, very basic assertion of one's identity, one's importance, one's will to live.
Miklos7, are you the same "Miklos" who participated here and at Abuzz and has not been heard from for a year or more? Your alias and the quality of your writing ("Miklos" is a published poet) suggests you are one and the same.
Thank you, JLN, for the compliment. Yes, Miklos7 is the old (older!) Miklos. I have been working on a new book, this one a childhood memoir, and it is finally in print. Now, I have a slightly less structured schedule, and I look forward greatly to participating in discussions. I am so very glad to see that you are here!
Miklos, I am thrilled to see you too. You are so welcome on a2k. (Not to get mushy.)
wonderful to see you here in print Miklos
and congratulations on your new publication!
Yes, Miklos, a hearty congratulations on the publication. I still enjoy your previously published poems and essays.
I was thinking earlier today of the title of this thread, the SOCIAL purpose of art. I forget what I've contributed so far, but I tend not to think of art as having a social (in the sense of a large-scale societal) function so much as it's having PERSONAL functions. I paint for the satisfaction it gives me regarding some not understood, and probably unconscious, drives, and I look at the works of others for the same kind of satisfaction. I know that art as an institution serves SOCIETAL functions which accounts in part for its near universality. But the uses to which Stalin (socialist realism) or the Mexican revolutionaries (social realism) are no more than political propaganda. But if someone is poetically or aesthetically moved by my drawings and paintings or I by theirs, THAT is a social function--which is to say INTER-PERSONAL, and perhaps my answer to the question of this thread.
Greetings to ossobuco, shepaints, and JLN--and thank you for your warm welcome!
JLN, about your good post: Am I very naive to think that most propaganda art, as with any art that has a manipulative agenda, stands out as being so obviously contrived that its intended effect is blunted? When I look at the anti-German art produced here during WWI and WWII, it seems very heavy-handed and, therefore, hard to take seriously, especially as genuine art. The same applies to German propaganda of the same period. Perhaps, I perceive a distinction between art and propagandistic artistic design because I have the luxury of living in a highly varied context. If, by contrast, one lives under a regime that employs a particular style and message over an extended period of time--and this is the only "art" one sees--perhaps it becomes part of the way of the world. At the other extreme from this evil wallpapering, does there exist a propaganda art which has the imagination and resonance of a fine art that has no political agenda? I cannot think of any (would I recognize it?!), but it may well exist. Also, it seems reasonable to say that, perhaps, all lively art (even anti-art, like Dada) has an agenda--just not as dark and not as linear as that in most propaganda. For instance, strong paintings seem to work towards the evolution of the viewer as well as of the artist. Propaganda art seems intrinsically devolutionary: it is designed to reduce the vision of those who experience it--to confine perception to a narrow field in a particular direction. Perhaps, the encouragement of expansion of individual thought is the highest social purpose of art--whether one is talking about the society as a whole or a single viewer. And, maybe, the deep satisfaction that you find in painting--both yours and others'--is the sensation of an evolving vision. As for me, I don't enjoy works that try to tell me what to think, but I love art that invites my mind to spin out fresh wonder--and then come back to spin some more.
I just reviewed the posts of this thread, and I am pleased to see how my most recent post remains consistent with what Coluber and I have been expressing--not that consistency is so important. What my last post seemed to do is leave out of account much of what Miklos added in his first post.
Miklos your comments, " Propaganda art seems intrinsically devolutionary: it is designed to reduce the vision of those who experience it--to confine perception to a narrow field in a particular direction. Perhaps, the encouragement of expansion of individual thought is the highest social purpose of art--whether one is talking about the society as a whole or a single viewer", are critically true and important. This may be one reason why I respond most to paintings that contain a degree of ambiguity, an ambiguity that makes room for my projective powers. Art is always a duet, requiring both the artist-maker and the viewer-maker.
