Essay on Speakers review (Aja Rose Bond & Gabriel Saloman)
Historically, art played an important part in the life of society. speakers recognize the importance and role of art still raise the question that begs whether art is still important or not and whether art has preserved its power and capacity to influence the public opinion as it once used to do. In fact, speakers offer the negative answer to both of these questions since they believe that art as a form of protest cannot gain the mass support as political movements for example. Instead, art that challenges conventional norms, that rebels and protests is likely to remain misunderstood by the audience and artists are likely to remain outsiders, whose work are unknown not only to the mass audience but also to critics. Therefore, speakers shape the main problem of the modern art, the problem of the widening gap between art that protests against the rise of the mass culture and consumerism leading to the devaluation of basic humanistic values and degradation of the population and the enhancement of the mass culture, which steadily takes niches once held by true art.
Speakers focus on the problem of the relationship between art and profound social processes that take place in the society. They view art as a form of the manifestation of the position of artists in relations to the existing social order, culture, politics and other issues. Art was a form of the self-realization for artists and the way of the communication between artists and the audience. Artists used their creative works to communicate their ideas, messages and vision to the audience. In such a way, they attempted to share their ideas and form new values, ideals and aspirations in people. However, speakers point out that today artists have lost their impact on the audience because they slip to the marginalization in the time of the overwhelming power of the mass culture.
At the same time, speakers views art as a form of protest of artists against the emerging consumerism, the domination of material values and the widening gaps between the ruling elite and the rest of the society, especially the poor. For example, speakers stand on the ground that artists of the 1960s – 1970s basically stood on the leftist ground and attempted to draw the public attention to problems of the working class by means of their art. Protests and strikes of artists aimed at the change of the attitude of the public to art and artists. In fact, those protests and strikes were probably last attempts of artists to win the struggle against mass culture and what speakers define as ‘amateurization’ of art, when people, who are not professional artists, try to become ones, although with little success from the artistic point of view. Nevertheless, the emergence of mass culture and amateur artists resulted in the devaluation of true art and professional artists became marginalized and lost their position as representative of the mainstream art and culture. Instead, they became in the position when they created art for the art’s sake being misunderstood by the public and being unable to attract the public to their works, because the public was just unable to understand those works.
Challenging artistic forms and unusual works of art were challenging but their main point was to attract the public attention and to confront the emerging mass culture, which artists viewed as a threat to the true art and society, where individuals are individuals but not objects to mass culture and consumerism. Speakers place emphasis on numerous attempts of artists to draw the attention of the public by means of unusual and unexpected experiments in the field of art. However, their experiments still had little success because they were separated from the real, regular life of the average people. As a result, people were unable to perceive art as artists intended the audience to perceive it because their creative work was too complicated, while people were inclined to the perception of the mass culture, which was simple and easy to understand.
At the same time, speakers stand on the ground that the artistic protest is virtually impossible because art always stays aside of the real life. Art is the personification of the beauty, aesthetics and non-material world and people cannot change their view on art. As a result, people often simply fail to understand art, especially modern one. The widening gap between art and people has opened the way for the mass culture. Speakers warns against the risk of transforming mass culture into the means of propaganda of certain ideology, while art always contributed to the freedom of thought and speech and stimulated diversity in society.
At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that the widening gap between modern art and the mass audience became the major driver of the weakening of the impact of art and artists on the society. More important, the widening gap between art and mass audience has opened the way for the emergence of the mass culture, which artists have attempted to struggle against but all their efforts have been in vain so far. Modern art remained and still remains incomprehensible for the average viewer, where the working class artists used to stand for has vague ideas about art and cannot understand even the most evident and eloquent artistic forms, while mass culture is almost the only artistic form that can reach the working class and the mass audience, although mass culture has little to do with true art.
In addition, art has always been in the conflict between the emerging ideology and attempts of artists to stand on their ground and manifest their ideas openly and in contrast to the dominant cultural views and values, especially those shaped by the mass culture. In fact, speakers view the failure of artists’ protests against the rise of the mass culture, consumerism and decreasing role of art as the major loss of artists and art in the 20th century but this loss was predetermined by the intrinsic inability of art to strike since any forms of art that are not conventional and beyond the understanding of the average person, remains outside the public ideological framework, while mass culture takes niches, which artists has fled from because of their protests against mass culture and devaluation of art along with the rise of consumerism. Thus, speaker develop the idea of the decline of art as a protest movement that juxtaposes to the mass culture and consumerism that prevail in the modern society.
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