Political Art is Message With No Meaning

Art has meaning, but no use. It is only useful in itself, as itself. It is meant to please, to give people a glimpse of reality. Reality is meaningful, but art is never useful.

 

Art is never useful, but it is social; it’s usually a reaction to sociopolitical conditions. Some artists commit their art completely to sociopolitical purposes.

 

Kung (1984) won’t assign their protest art meaning, however, he instead acknowledges a sociopolitical message: “No work of art,” he writes, “however committed—so far as it really is a work of art—has strictly speaking a sociopolitical meaning; otherwise it would be sheer propaganda or agitation” (p. 23).

 

A sociopolitical meaning is really only a message. Propaganda delivers information meant to instruct. Is usually has an ideological component. Art is different; it discloses. It invites interaction apart from ideology. Hazelton (1967) explains that art is not, “a container or package with a ‘message’ wrapped up inside . . . it is not detachable or removable from the form in which it reaches us. . . . [there is] no message to be extracted in these works; whatever meaning is disclosed is given in and with the works themselves, not as an ingredient to be factored out” (p. 24). Art is meaningful; it has meaning, where political art is only a message—usually propaganda.

 

It stands, then, that political artists want only to be agreed with, while real artist don’t care if they’re convincing. They only reveal. Meaning is made plain.

 

References:

 

Hazelton, R (1967). A Theological Approach to Art. New York: Abingdon.

Kung, H. (1981). Art and the question of meaning. New York: Crossroad.