The relationship and commitment of an artist to his or her society in a revolutionary environment

Abstract

From Introduction: In Aesthetics after Modernism, Peter Fuller writes that "good art can only be realized when a creative individual encounters a living tradition with deep tendrils in communal life" (Fuller, 1983: p.36). Yet Francis Bacon believed that "the suffering of people and the differences between people are what have made great art, and not egalitarianism ... " (Brighton and Morris, ' 1977: p.234 and 235). If it is true that art was once an integral part of society and reflected the aspirations of the whole community, its effect on society today has become marginal. Throughout history, especially since the emergence of Romanticism in the nineteenth century, the relationship between art, the artist and the public has become more and more tenuous. The spread of capitalism has resulted in widespread changes in methods of production, literacy, and industrial and technical development. Societies have become so diversified that today art no longer expresses the values and spiritual concerns of a unified society, but rather the individual or the small group. Given this, it has become impossible to return to a system of shared values and beliefs. To preserve some kind of 'truth', art has become a self-evolving activity, autonomous from political, social and economic concerns, and the term 'art for art's sake' is synonymous with many artists working in western capitalist societies.