What is Art?

This past Saturday, I spent the day walking around Clinton, Iowa, knocking on doors and talking to the people about election politics. The purpose of this process, called canvassing, is to relate issues that each individual is concerned about to the candidate you are promoting. It sounds cult-like, I know, but the process of bringing politics to people one-on-one has been one of the most crucial elements of winning an election, and, surprisingly enough, has been a fundamental by-product of art throughout the ages.\nThe term “activist art” refers to a style of art that uses imagery and irony very heavily to highlight public concern and (hopefully) promote a change in the status quo. It first began in the 1930s and reached a very strong peak in the 1960s, most notably in the civil rights, free speech and anti-war movements. Perhaps the most well-known quote from the free speech movement came from Mario Savio, a UC Berkeley philosophy major, who in a speech at Sproul Plaza in Berkeley, called out to activists:\n“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”\nMany other artists of the time such as musical artist Joan Baez, militant black playwright Amiri Baraka and feminist visual artist Judy Chicago used their art to speak out against the current social condition in an effort to enlighten human minds.\nEven today, activist art is an esteemed function of the artistic community. Anonymous British graffiti artist Banksy, for instance, created controversy after spray-painting disturbing images on the walls of London buildings with shocking messages. One image portrays Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald gaily strolling along, holding hands with a South Vietnamese girl screaming and covered in Napalm. Another portrays Britney Spears with a caption that reads, “Oh my God, that’s so cute the way you just draw on stuff and think about yourself all the time.”\nWe all observe things every day that make us ill over the current social situation. We all say things to our friends about the dangerous road our generation is taking or the ignorance we see in many. In observation, we take the first step in the process of what many activist artists before us underwent – the process of promoting change.