Personally, I always feel that artistic statements fail both the artist and the audience, but most of all the subject... forgive me if I'm a little egocentric in casting my opinions, but I've never seen any benefit in using art as a tool for political expression (the bottom line when it comes to 'making a statement'). It always threatens to turn today's 'good cause' into tomorrow's tedious old chestnut, cf. the fur debate. Public concern is now turning into a stifled yawn.
"Only connect", said E.M. Forster, and it seems to work. Art that opens people's minds and raises their questions seems to radiate an influence that lasts for hundreds of years. Leonardo da Vinci never successfully closed any of those 'arguments with oneself' that seems to make great art. Nor did Richard Avedon. Even 'Guernica' and the incredible work of Robert Capa was poetic reportage, a mirror of what the artist has seen, rather than a direct attempt to influence political process. But what remains of Victorian Britain's attempts to unite art with progressive politics, or hysterical McCarthy-era spy flicks? Nothing but our laughter.
Don't get me wrong, social injustices have to be fought and legal and economic dilemmas have to be brought to a conclusion. But disaster strikes when artists try to use their 'creativity' to affect hard political change, rather than believing that art, in influencing how we look at ourselves and ground ourselves in what goes on around us, has the power to set us on the road to a more permanent and profound change.
Brian Eno (possibly my favourite musician and a brilliant, insightful man - just visit wired.com and take in his 'theory of culture') said in a recent interview that social progresses of the last century seemed to involve a process of the public at large bringing certain social groups further into a 'circle of empathy'. He's very active politically, but he has the smarts to voice his political beliefs in the political sphere. When he makes art, he is only an artist, and never the twain seems to meet. If more artists had taken such a stance as a lead, I wonder if John Kerry might be in office right now.
Im glad he is shooting. If he were not, where would i find images like that?
