Does Tolstoi Correctly Identify the Role of the Artist?

Artists Response To.....

Leon Tolstoi once said “In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man.”

What does this say for the artist in these days of sure transition?   What are your thoughts?

Further consider what Tolstoi said in an arugmentative essay:  “”As you say it yourself, art can serve to unite people and to realize that brotherhood of man, just like religion, through its ideas of goodness and morality.”

Thoughts?

Does the Artist Owe the World Anything?

 Here is an idea for discussion.  Going into a time when surely there will be big global change (at least economic if not metaphysical), does the artist have any responsibility to create art for purposes other than personal income.  Can art be part of the process to stave off what seems inevitable?

In the past, artists have reflected, reacted to and responded to crisis and politics.  Some would place art in a central role in crisis and transition

There is activist art , intended to raise awareness within this physical realm of politics.  Can art be an effective voice of communications that may even go beyond creating awareness?

There there is also the belief that every thought can manifest a change by virture of the energy put out at a higher level of consciouness.   Given the amount of cerebral energy that goes into art, can art be used as device to change the global course we are on

What do you think?  Please.  I invite your comments

Where is Our National Culture?

Does This Seem Familiar?

If when you read this article you get a sense of historical deja vu in the way artists step up to face crisis and transition, perhaps there is a reason.  The only thing missing, is that this hasn’t happened in what is now being called The Great Recession.  — Yet.

THE WPA

The Works Progressive Administration (WPA) was a New Deal measure with a three part agenda. Initially, it was a government attempt to employ a variety of artists, writers, and musicians so that the work they produced could help them make a living and subsequently enhance the quality of American life during the Great Depression. From this inital aim developed several other agendas, including a federal push toward the creation of a “national culture.” This concept was one developed and pushed for by a government that viewed economically struggling America as a people without a unifying, central culture. With regard to artwork, the WPA commissioned thousands of artists to observe the American scene; that is, its people, its landscape, and its architecture, and capture through their brushstrokes and lenses, the life they were seeing. 

(More – Click on link)

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG99/vizzuso/WPAproject.html