Blog
Posted on 6/30/2025 4:03:36 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
Today is the last day of June, which means that celebration of our national birth comes at the end of the week on July fourth. Normally, this would be a time of community and recognition of all things American, and, hopefully, for most Americans this will still be true. However, for some years now – decades even – there has been much discord and outright animosity between elements of the political left and right and a few factions in between. (In my view, the internet has played a large part inflaming these divisions by allowing a certain sense of safety through distance and anonymity, but that is another discussion.)
There have been times in my past when I have been quite politically engaged, especially just after high school during the civil rights and Vietnam eras. Art, on the other hand, has never been about politics for me although I am very aware that throughout much art history, politics did play a large part at times. What we know of many ancient civilizations from their monumental expressions is that their art was propagandistic and/or intended to intimidate foes through the expression of dominance and power. At other times, of course, art primarily displayed spiritual concepts and served as a means of connecting societies to the larger spiritual world.
As in any field of endeavor, artists have personal as well as aesthetic views and choose to express them or not directly, metaphorically, or in combination according to their engagement with their passion and commitment to their trade. As I was coming of age in the sixties, I encountered a wide range of art that was highly socially engaged with issues related to war, race, masculinity and femininity, and other social concerns of the times. Even a movement like Abstract Expressionism could be read as a large political statement vis-a-vis the centuries of figurative art that had preceded it. Since the late 1800s, some have argued that strife in the world was a major contributor to various iconoclastic movements that accelerated in the twentieth century stoked by the impact of two world wars.
Perhaps I am naïve in my idealism, but I tend to see most art for its creative expression and how an artist has manifested something that past Romantics would describe as expressions of truth and beauty. For me, at least, art is too personal to mire it in politics and potentially diminish its effect by using it for some purpose other than to uplift and inspire.
