"DOES POLITICAL CULTURE AND
CHANGE ALTER THE MEANING OF ART?"

First, I offer this brief post with a condition. I mean a catch. Or with reservations. No, that's not right either. I guess this little stream of consciousness gets across my point as well as any single word can: I've got a nasty cold, and I'm having trouble thinking straight. Ordinarily, I would have just posted a couple of excerpts and links, but I've done that the last couple of days, so I figure I'll whip out a little thought I've had since yesterday. Sorry if it doesn't make sense.

The title, above, to this post is the wording for a lot of search engine hits I've been getting for the last few days. This is an interesting question to me, and I haven't really addressed it in blog form, so I might as well give these cyber-searchers a little bit to chew on. Of course, the reason I've never really tried to tackle this question is because the answer seems self-evident: yes, political culture and change alter the meaning of art. Duh. I assume this is a question assigned to university freshmen who probably have never really considered the role of the artist in society. That would explain the sloppy approach to the search.

Anyway, the reason the answer to the question is so obvious is because of what artists do. That is, they respond to what they observe around them. Indeed, artists do not work in a vacuum; they work in a social, political, cultural, and economic context, just as we all do. That context affects the life of the artist, and therefore his work. Same thing with people who experience art: the context of their existence weighs heavily on how individuals react to any given work of art; when people's lives change, their subjective understandings of virtually everything has potential to change, as well. So, too, with art.

The Victorian era writer, Rudyard Kipling, was once considered to be one of the greats, studied in English lit classes everywhere--I know him from the children's cartoons that adapted his stories, such as The Jungle Book, or Riki Tiki Tavi, and I must admit, they're good stories. Thing is, Kipling was an unabashed champion of the brutal British Empire; his writings are full of condescension for the indigenous peoples exploited by the Crown. Thus, he is no longer held in the esteem that he once was. Culture and politics have changed, and so, too, has the meaning of his work. David's Death of Marat, painted during the French revolution, had profound meaning to his contemporaries that doesn't really affect us now--I mean it's a cool painting and all, but it just doesn't hit me the way that, say, picutres of MLK being shot do. Times have changed, and so has the meaning of Death of Marat. Or maybe it's because I'm not French. Whatever, same thing. A rather severe and recent example of political change affecting the meaning of art is how Clear Channel banned John Lennon's ode to peace "Imagine" shortly after 9/11. Politics changed, and peace was, apparently, no longer a virtue. In the new world, Americans craved war. Thus, the meaning of "Imagine" changed.

I could go on and on with these examples, but I'm sure you get the point: politics and culture change, and we change; therefore, the meaning of art changes. If you're interested in more, check out my post from last December, comparing the work of dada-surrealist master Marcel Duchamp to the work of self-promoting pretty boy hack Jeff Koons; both artists seem to be examples of a particular approach to visual art, but historical context means everything when trying to sort the two out.

Okay, time for some cough syrup.

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