Effect of Art Essay

Traditionally, we fox believed that art imitates life. The painter represents what he or she sees by producing a scene on a canvas. The sculptor does the homogeneous with bronze or stone. A photographer or film maker does it even much directly. A writer describes life in his or her hold ins. This simple nonion is known as mimesis. But some have questioned the one- way of life spirit of mimesis by arguing that art also diversitys the way we view the world, and in fact, life some generation imitates art kind of than the other way around.The person who first articulated this belief pieceively was Oscar Wilde. Speaking about the muddled conditions in London in the late 19th century, he wrote that the way we perceive them c attend toed because of art. Referring to the wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the throttle valve lamps and turning houses into shadows he argued that poets and painters have taught people the loveliness of such effects. h armonize to Wilde, They did not exist till fraud had invented them.And you dont have to look too far to see anti-mimesis in our lives. To what extent is our lookout man on life altered by ideas we hear in discs? The characterization of people in films? The styles we see in fashion photography? hotshot bulky example of this is the TV series The Sopranos, and how it affected both the maffia in the USA and the FBI.Arts crop on fiat propaganda and censorshipThroughout history, it has always been the case that art has the ability to change society, especially when new media are used to express an idea. During the starting domain War, for example, movie cameras were used for the first time to record trench state of war when the film was shown in cinemas in Britain, audiences ran out screaming. This led to the government censor further such use of such a powerful medium. And in government censorship, and use of art as propaganda, we see how seriously governments seize on th e effect of art.All of the major dictators of the C20th understood the power of art to influence the population. In national socialist Ger some, Hitler set up the Ministry of Propaganda and National Enlightenment. It was headed by Goebbels, who make sure that nothing was published, performed, or exhibited without his approval. When this happens, you know in that respect isnt sacking to be a happy ending.And what Goebbels approved, of course, only fit in with Nazi ideology and ideas. In terms of art, this meant no modern and abstract art, sure as shooting nothing hostile to the regime, and nothing that featured images other than the stereotypical blonde-haired, mordant eyed set in idyllic pastoral scenes of blissful happiness.In Stalinist Russia, there was also a keen understanding of the power of art. Art portrayed contented peasants, industrious workers, and Stalin himself. In fact, Stalin was shown god-like in many paintings, a phenomenon known as the Cult of Stalin. Just as i n Germany, gigantic architectural projects expressed the power of the state.However, there is no question that in Russia there were greater chaste achievements than in Nazi Germany. Composers worked with a few(prenominal) hindrances as seen in the works by Prokoviev and Shostakovich, and film-makers such as Eisenstein emerged. Arts influence on society the outpouring of Lady Chatterleys Lover But even under less oppressive governments, the artistic expression of certain ideas can be subject to control. One great example is the book Lady Chatterleys Lover by DH Lawrence, which was deemed revolting on many levels. In this book, Constance Reid, a woman from a forward-moving liberal middle class family marries a minor member of the aristocracy, nobleman Clifford Chatterley, and takes the title Lady Chatterley.But her husband is injured in the First World War, confined to a wheelchair, and left impotent. Despite this, he becomes a successful writer and businessman. It is more hi s obsession with financial success and fame rather than any physical difficulties which come among him and his wife, and she begins an affair with their gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. The largely disconsolate establishment of Britain at the time the book was published in Italy in 1928 were shocked by many aspects of the book. First, there was the fact that the book was abhorrent, in the way it went into explicit detail the affair that took place (see below).Second, there was the fact that a women was breaking her marriage vows, something considered far worse than a man behaving in the same way. Finally, it represented an intimate relationship between a member of the pass up classes (although it emerges during the story that Mellors is actually well-educated, and became an officer in the army during the First World War) and the upper classes, a concept that was all told taboo in Britain at that time. The book was duly banned.But the book was republished by Penguin books in 1960. The attorney general, Reginald Manningham-Buller (dubbed Bullying-Manners by the journalist and author Bernard Levin) had to read only four chapters to decide to prosecute Penguin books for publishing it. What annoyed him was not just the content, but the fact that the price of the book meant it was affordable to women and members of the lower classes (remember that only few women worked at this time, and husbands were generally in charge of family finances). The trial was a disaster for Manningham-Buller and the prosecution.They had failed to find any experts to support their case, in cutting contrast to Penguins defence team, which had brought in authors, journalists, academics, and even members of the clergy to defend the book. Manningham-Buller and his team had very little idea of what Lawrence had been trying to express in his book, regularly being caught out by the superior insight of the witnesses they were trying to hold out. And although they tried to shock the jury in his opening speech, Manningham-Buller announced The condition fuck or fucking appears no less than 30 times . . . Cunt 14 times balls 13 times shit and skunk six times apiece cock four times make up three times, and so on. they were unable to prove that the book would have a negative influence on the readers it was aimed at.According to the GuardianNo other jury verdict in British history has had such a deep social impact. Over the next three months Penguin sold 3m copies of the book an example of what many years later was described as the Spycatcher effect, by which the attempt to suppress a book through discomfited litigation serves only to promote huge sales. The jury that iconic case of democratic society had given its imprimatur to ending the taboo on sexual discussion in art and entertainment. Within a few years the stifling censorship of the theatre by the lord chamberlain had been abolished, and a gritty realism emerged in British cinema and drama. (Saturday Night a nd sunshine Morning came out at the same time as the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley, and very soon Peter Finch was commenting on Glenda Jacksons tired old tits in Sunday Bloody Sunday and consciousness Tynan said the first fuck on the BBC.)Homosexuality was decriminalised, abortions were available on reasonable demand, and in order to obtain a divorce it was superfluous to prove that a spouse had committed the matrimonial crime of adultery. judge no longer put on black caps to sentence prisoners to hang by the neck until dead. Can we say, though, that it was art in this case that changed society, or was it an interaction between human sciences (ie, the law) and the arts (the book) that led to change? This is from the same Guardian article the message of Lady Chatterleys Lover, half a century after the trial, is that literature in itself does no harm at all. The damage that gets attributed to books and to plays and movies and cartoons is caused by the actions of people who try to s uppress them.