Opinion | Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable
nytimes.com
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Opinion | Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable
For all its good intentions, art that tries to minister to its audience by showcasing moral aspirants and paragons or the abject victims of political oppression produces smug, tiresome works that are failures both as art and as agitprop. Artists and critics—their laurel bearers—should take heed.
Anastasia Berg • On the Aesthetic Turn | The Point Magazine
Important though it is, earthly beauty does not trump all other values. Moreover, it serves no purpose to assert that all political art is bad ex hypothesi. It is perfectly possible to make great art that serves as the instrument of an exterior purpose. That is why Chartres Cathedral was built and the St. Matthew Passion composed.
But making reality
... See moreThere’s a good deal of complaint about how flat contemporary art feels. Whether the problem is the failure of artists to create great art, or the failure of audiences and journalists to recognize (or seek out) great art, or some combination, I don’t know. Whether the key culprit is that art is too shallow and decorative or that it is too... See more