There are probably different reasons to realize artistic things. You can laud art only for the beauty: “art for art”. But you can also use art to communicate your feelings, your moods and your opinions too.
Art was particularly used during the wartimes to show involvement and to participate in rebellion against dictatorial regimes. It is a way to denounce injustice and crime. It is difficult to establish a history for protest art because many variations of it can be found throughout history.
Some people pretend that Picasso’s Guernica (1937) could be one of the first protest artworks. Many cases of protest art can be found during the early 1900s but the artists have really used protest during these last thirty years as a style to relay a message to the public.
As awareness of social justices around the world became more common among the public, an increase in protest art can be seen. Some of the most critically effective artworks of the recent period were staged outside the gallery, away from the museum and in that sense, protest art has found a different relationship to the public.
Art can be a way to protest, to show horror, injustice in a non-violent (physically but not psychologically) way. And there are always divers levels of comprehesion in a piece of artwork, so you can relay messages only for adverted people.
Last week I went to theater to see The Shape of Things from Neil Labute (in Paris, in “Le petit Théâtre de Paris”). Evelyn studies art. She meets Adam in a museum, where Adam is a watchman. She wants to make a protestation act by doing a graffiti on a sculpture. They begin to talk together and they want to meet again. Adam is not handsome, he has greasy hair, a big nose and he wears glasses, contrary to Evelyn who is a very slim and beautiful girl. They fall in love. And Adam begins to transform himself and looks more and more beautiful with the time.
Adam feels better about himself. He agrees to do all what Evelyn wants from him. She leads him to have surgery for his nose. Several months later Evelyn has to present her project for the university, on which she has worked for several months. And surprise: Adam is the subject of her project! She explains she transformed him and sculpted him as she wanted.
I see this project as a protest art against the uniformity set by the society. But can a human really be a piece of artwork? Adam has maybe become a very handsome man but is it a reason to see him as a piece of artwork? I think he has only become a product of the society. For me that shows the limit act of protest and protest art.
Written by Romane
1 comment
amandasmith
In effect, the artists revived poster art which was influenced by China. The media were fleeting, art was used as a weapon that could further the political aims of the group.
about 1 year ago
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