All art is fundamentally at least a bit political, make with that what you will
Like any first-time tourist in Madrid, I wanted to hit up as many art museums as possible to soak in the city's culture and connect with something meaningful. Aside from the art exhibits we stumbled upon in the tucked-away corners of Madrid, we explored the major touristy ones like Museo Nacional del Prado and Thyssen Bornemisza Museum. Somewhere in the maze of portraits, biblical allegories, fruit bowl paintings, I found myself intrigued by how even in the simplest, most mundane of still life paintings, these gallery labels in these museums always embed the art in its historical, social, political, and cultural context. Then and there, I decided that, if we can seemingly ascribe political meaning to a bowl of fruit, all art must therefore be political.
You must think this is a bold statement, especially if you believe art needs no justification, and see the politicization of art as corruption. Much as any student of the arts, I believe it all goes back to how we define politics in a broad sense. According to Foucault, “political thinking is focused on the concept of power relations.” Under this premise, art is always political because of the numerous power relations constantly at play: from the medium in which it is being displayed to the way we interact with the art itself, to the socioeconomic context in which it was created.
As one of my favourite theorists, Marshall McLuhan says, “the medium is always the message” – our surrounding will always influence the way we interpret the art piece. In other words, think about how the recognizable, sweet, herby, bready scent that radiates inside and outside all Subway restaurants. This sensory marketing is carefully curated to influence the behaviours and perceptions of all customers. In the same way, museums, art books, social media, or any platform that gives you access to art is populated with different, often micro-elements that will contribute to shaping the way you interact with the art. In this very exchange, lies power play.
Speaking of exchange, artists impose a subjective meaning to their art by expressing their personal thoughts, likings, ideologies, and visions in their works. By default, audiences are introduced to the artists’ world just by observing their creation. [1] As a medium, art connects artists and audience: thus, another form of power relation at motion. In a random blog I read about art and politics, the author contends: “Your art doesn’t have to explicitly address current events to be a valid political statement. It doesn’t even have to be overtly political to be a valid political statement. If it is authentic, true to your values, and an honest expression, it is, by its nature, a valid political statement." So, even when the artist is apolitical with his intentions, the very act of the audience observing the art piece vis-à-vis the artists’ creation is a social exchange; the dance of interpretations between the audience’s perception and the artist’s intention is yet another power choreography.
The notion that politics and art are intertwined is not a novel concept. I remember at the ripe age of 12, I was showing off to my family my newly acquired skill of drawing single-line stars, only for my mother to quickly caution me against drawing it at school because it resembled the blue star of David on the Israeli flag. I remember another instance in 2015 when my father forbade me from wearing my new yellow dress because we were going to visit my grandparents in Tariq El Jdideh, a predominantly Sunni area in Lebanon, and yellow would represent pro-Hezbollah sentiments. In Lebanon, colors ranging from blue to yellow, orange, green resemble different political ideologies or parties, which naturally influences the way we interact with or see the colors around us. We grow up seeing the world through political colored glasses.
Rym Momtaz/CNN. 'I Vote Orange' written in French on this ad by the Free Patriotic Movement lead by Christian Maronite Michel Aoun, a staunch ally of Hezbollah and part of the March 8th alliance. Orange is the FPM's trademark colour.
Although we can’t really pin down the phrase “all art is political” to a single origin, some of the roots can be found in the works of philosophers like Karl Marx, who contends that art, much as other facets of society, is influenced by the prevailing economic and political systems. His perspective emphasizes that art is inseparable from the sociopolitical power structures that shape the global landscape and can play an active role in influencing it.
The alternative perspective to “all art is political” is “Art for art’s sake,” or the French l’art pour l’art, which was coined in the early 19th century to expresses the belief that art needs no justification, that it need serve no political, didactic, or other end. Surely, the notion remains popular to this day. Yet, this movement was critiqued by the likes of Nietzsche who argued that there is 'no art for art's sake', the arts always express human values, communicate core beliefs, “When the purpose of moral preaching and of improving man has been excluded from art, it still does not follow by any means that art is altogether purposeless, aimless, senseless — in short, l'art pour l'art, a worm chewing its own tail. […] Art is the great stimulus to life: how could one understand it as purposeless, as aimless, as l'art pour l'art?”[2]
This is not to discredit artists that claim to create for the sake of creating. “All art is political” does not imply that the artist’s intentions always are. This is, however, to assert that intention behind creating can widely differ from the implication of the creation. In fact, the very act of deciding to create something unpolitical is a political stance. The same way being ‘neutral’ in politics benefits the oppressor, apolitical art is a deliberate decision, one that asserts the artist's choice to disengage from overtly political themes of their time. [3] This choice, however, does not absolve the artwork or its creator from the inherently political nature of artistic expression. Just as Toni Morrison asserts, “All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’ We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics,’ made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something.”
All the art paraded in these big museums is almost always associated with specific historical time and the overarching themes of the period. If art were truly for art, then the collections in the likes of Museo Nacional del Prado and Thyssen Bornemisza Museum would exist in a complete vacuum, devoid of the historical and contextual frameworks in which they were born. I believe this line of reasoning should be extended to our contemporary artistic endeavors – how are we reflecting our sociopolitical realities? How are we asserting our collective memory? How are we amplifying our solidarity beyond our digital screens? How are we recording the oppressive and discriminatory structures, and the consequential outcry for justice and liberation? How do we want to be remembered?
We live in radical times, and our art should take a radical stance the same way we are. There is no point shying away from using the word “political” – there is nothing “unpolitical” about the massacres, genocides, wars, crumbling infrastructures and healthcare systems, brutal ethnic violence, volatile, sporadic clashes happening across the Middle East. There is nothing unpolitical about western powers’ inaction either.
In a world where colors bear political weight and each brushstroke or poem can be a powerful act of defiance, I find that "l'art pour l'art" rings hollow. Art is one of the most powerful communicative tools, one that holds the potential to invoke introspection and meditation in ways no other medium can. In fact, it is in the least outwardly political poetry that I find myself examining the veiled injustice in my everyday experiences (think, Adrienne Rich for example). Now, I am not going to pretend to take the moral highroad, I’d like to assert that I am an advocate of self-expression in every color, sound, shape, form. Our creative agency, at the end of the day, is the determining factor in every complex interplay with art.
Instead, this is a call for all creatives to acknowledge the inherent political dimension of their work and to consider the impact they can have on society. It is not a plea to confine creativity within the boundaries, but rather an encouragement to recognize the potential of art as a catalyst for change, a force capable of challenging norms and fostering meaningful dialogue. To wrap up, I’ll part with one of my all-time favorite quotes by Marwan Makhoul: “In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political, I must listen to the birds and in order to hear the birds, the warplanes must be silent.”
Citations and other cool relevant works
[1] “It is my belief that all art is fundamentally at least a little bit political and because of that, inherently, my art is also slightly political. It just so happened that in the ’70s it was a little bit more overtly political. When it comes to the fact that art delves into the existence, the raison d’être of these artists, it becomes political fundamentally. I feel that is what art is all about,” an eccentric 79-year-old South Korean performance artist talks about the artist’s responsibility, and why it’s important to mix the light with the dark.
[2] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” § 24
[3] James Baldwin, a political artist if ever one walked the earth, took protest art to task in his powerful essay. Check out James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe’s Conversation About Beauty, Morality, and the Political Power of Art for more on the “long, erotic, unended wrestling on art and politics.