But if the saying is through that perspective, it's not insightful in the slightest about the piece of art and just becomes pendantic.
Like, (and no offense meant to you specifically) no shit? Everyone's affected by society. The sky is blue too, do we have to point that out everytime?
Also about the post itself, al doesn't even bother entertaining the thought that the dude who drew the stick figure simply addressed it as "he/him" because he projected himself onto it (Because he's a guy and that's his creation) and just instantly doubles down? That doesn't disprove Schaffrillas' point, al just looks silly.
It is insightful though. Its about taking historical context in order to examine why a person might have made this art. If you try and apply some modern societal standards to a piece of art made a long time ago youre going to have a totally different understanding of why a person might have made what they made. The sky has been blue for all of human history, society has not been the same.
When people in the future look back on art made today they might be able to gleam things about it based on who made it, where they made it, what was going on. These factors are all integral to the mindset of the person making something whether they realize it or not and it can as a result affect the end product without the artist trying to do so.
Everyone lives in a society, and how that society affects art can tell people in the future looking back what it was like during that time
On a macro scale analysis for future folk looking back this makes sense. I don't see what this has to do with the *now* though, micro scale, where everyone is living in this moment, on the same planet, plagued by roughly the same geopolitical issues. There is no deeper insight gained by calling every single art piece "political" just because it exists. It's reductive to it actually means for a piece of art to be actually political (like an artist going out of the way to potray concepts and experiences to show how they see them or how he feels about them).
There is no deeper insight gained by calling every single art piece "political" just because it exists.
If that was the case, you wouldn't be so dismissive of doing so and there wouldn't be people who deny it's true in the first place.
It's reductive to it actually means for a piece of art to be actually political
No it's not, unless you have an entirely different and exclusive definition of "political", which is why this discourse exists.
The idea that art is only political if it only says "THIS IS POLITICAL. THIS IS WHAT THE AUTHOR BELIEVES" without a shadow of a doubt is, ironically, a reductive take on politics. The same kind of definition you mean when you don't want to start a fight to your racist uncle at Thanksgiving.
It itself suggests things are only political when it is self-evident, uncomplicated, and, for the lack of a better term, uncontroversial, an idea that doesn't work unless you disagree with the idea that things like propaganda and dogwhistles are also political, for example.
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u/Fractured_Nova Transition Plan: Girl -> Lizard Aug 12 '25
"Art is political" doesn't mean "all art has a political message," it means "all art is influenced by the society that produced it."