Art as a Political Statement

Art as Political Statement It is almost impossible to completely separate art from the social and political context in which it originates. When considering art works from a variety of contexts and situations, it is clear that artist as often as not ignored and embraced politics as either inspiration for their work, or indeed treated it as a force to be shunned for its destruction of the creative spirit.

Both acceptance and defiance of the political arena, it will be shown below, constitute a form of political statement in terms of art. Expressionism Expressionism began its evolution during the early part of the 20th century. This movement contrasted with impressionism in that it did not aim to reproduce, but rather to impose its views of objects in the world.

When taken from a political context then, the political agenda is not always clear, as the artist is attempting to represent his or her own reactions to the world that is perceived, rather than providing an accurate, realistic depiction thereof. The main aim of the impressionists was to find and reach the highest intensity of expression. In terms of politics, expressionism enjoyed its most profitable time during an interesting political era. Germany was mostly the focus of this art form.

Particularly interesting in this context was the Dada movement, of which George Grosz was a part (Shipe). George Grosz Grosz depicted his distaste for the Weimar Republic by creating distasteful images in his drawings. "The Hero" is one of these. It depicts the somber image of a war veteran, mutilated both physically and mentally, as suggested by the wide and somewhat vacant smile on his face. The image is made all the more somber by the fact that there is a total absence of color to the drawing.

It appears that Grosz is making a point about the irony of a society that calls its war veterans "heroes," but that is too preoccupied with its own pursuits to realize that the hero has to beg for a living. This is an open statement about the politics of the time, and many examples of this could be found in the artwork of the time.

The drawing is furthermore crudely done; a reflection of the politics of the time, and a criticism against the crimes perpetrated against those who fought willingly for the country (Shipe). When creating this painting, Grosz was highly critical of the Kaiser, the German aristocracy, and their apparent lack of compassion for those who suffer as a result of aristocratic atrocities committed by the leadership of the time. It is also interesting to note the subtle criticism leveled not only at society aristocracy, but also against the "heroes" themselves.

The smile suggests a lack of intelligence, as mentioned above. This can be interpreted to go deeper than the suggestion of brain damage as a result of the war. The "hero" appears happy to simply be there, suggesting that he may have been less than intelligent when joining the army in the first place. Possibilities include that they could have been fooled into serving an institution that led to no more than rejection, or that they willingly went into a venture that turned out to be foolish.

In this way Gosz depicted human frailty, lack of intelligence and gullibility through the drabness combined with the striking quality of his images. Franz Marc In contrast to Gosz, Franz Marc depicted his expressionistic art through color rather than the lack of it. Another contrast is that he used animals rather than human beings as the reflection of his inner views. This is a result of Marc's view that animals were purer and more beautiful than humanity - somewhat reflecting the view regarding human stupidity depicted by Gosz.

Rather than the political situation of the time, Marc was at first influenced by his own intensely religious views, and his idea that God was both beautiful and part of nature. His earlier paintings thus had a somewhat pantheistic ideal that God was beauty, and as such was part of nature. Furthermore indicative of his expressionism, is the fact that Marc painted animals to capture their essence rather than to depict them with a sense of accurate reality.

As such, Marc's animals appeared in non-naturalistic colors, which has symbolist qualities such as blue for masculinity, while red and yellow stood for femininity. To depict yellow as a joyous color, Marc created The Yellow Cow in order to show the happiness and the female depicted by the cow leaping through the air (Pioch). As the political situation however worsened with the advent of the First World War, Marc's paintings reflected his fears. His animals became smaller and spread out, losing their qualities of calm and contemplation.

In this way Marc makes the statement that even the artist as expressionist is not completely immune from the outside influence of fear and doubt (Pioch). Fauvism Fauvism was a mostly Parisian movement that did not last long, but had an intense influence on the art world. The use of color by fauvists is reminiscent of Marc's, as non-natural colors are used to depict emotion and style. Color was used as more than a mere means of shaping forms on canvass, however.

Instead, colors were used in an almost barbaric manner, not entirely giving from to forms, but rather expressing the emotions of the painters. The style was rougher than that of Marc, almost to the extent where it was clumsy. Indeed, for artists such as Henri Matisse and Andre Derain, color became a force in itself, rather than a secondary form of shaping outlines. Color was thus used as an expression not only of an idea, but of the very emotion behind the idea.

The result was complete artistic freedom in terms of using color. This was reflective of the variety of emotions experienced during this time in France. Artists turned away from the external situation towards the inner world, and used their emotions to make political comments ("Andre Derain"). Much like Marc above, for example, Vlaminck used color to depict his contrasting moods. An example is "The River" where the surface appears at peace, but the viewer is aware of an intense inner storm brewing.

Derain's Charing Cross Bridge also depicted primitivism through the use of natural images in his paintings. The color and shape used in these works show a turning away from political turmoil and trouble to a wished for situation that may never depict itself. In this way the surface calm of "The River" represents the peace that is wished for, but that does not exist without the certainty of further trouble to come (Hughes). Henri Matisse was the leader of the Fauvist movement,.