RADICAL ART AND THE QUESTION OF FREEDOM OF INQUIRY by Kirby Olson

Foto von Kilian Seiler auf Unsplash

The notion of radical art bifurcates shortly after the great democratic revolutions at the end of the 18th century.  Radical artists no longer painted propaganda for church and state, no longer did art mean the painting of flattering portraits of the rich; instead it meant on the one hand painting and drawing which mobilized the consciousness of the poor towards revolt, and on the other it meant pure research into the nature of art and the human experience without regard to any external source of appraisal of standard of values.  This bifurcation continues to this day and can be seen in nearly every artist and critic – but can perhaps be summarized in the artistic mode of difference between Picasso’s Guernica, which expressed outrage over the fascist destruction of a small Spanish city; and his pure research into forms in his Cubist period.

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