If everything starts being politically ideologized, then the beautiful has lost.
Somehow nowadays everything is being turned into something politically. Really everything. Politics has soaked all parts of life. Commercials are carefully produced under the rules of the political Zeitgeist; done with an ideologic template you need to fit in. And don´t you dare not stick to those rules, then it´s not long until you will be burried under a shitstorm, outrage and calls for a boycott. By all those who can´t wait to jump from one ideology to the next, no matter which one it is, it´s all right as long as you jump on the current Zeitgeist. More conservative. More religious. More self-centered. More whatever. Even artists love jumping on that train, and so these days many of them love to be celebrated not only for their art but even more so for their political attitude that they blurt out whenever they can and weave into their artistic work whenever possible. Suddenly everyone seems to be an expert of countless countries when it comes to political and society issues. Now there is nothing wrong with being a political activist one or the other way, but what happens when all the lines between art and politics blur? What is left of art when its purpose becomes more and more political?
Art can wake us up. It can be thought-provoking. But art has also the purpose to indulge the senses. To abduct us from our daily routine and sometimes from humankind itself. Into another world. With our souls being touched. Art is the colourful flower in between some grey concrete walls. Art is a place where we should be able to feel and realize the beauty and fascination about life. Art should demand that the beautiful itself, is reason enough for its existence.
I think that most people don´t even realize anymore how their lives are being determinded by politics and ideologies. How eager they take part. How they judge and condemn with a black and white thinking and divide it all into good and evil. And they sometimes overlook the fact that they might be wrong after all. And there needs to a place and time for things that are only brought into being or are looked at for what they are without valuation. Such as a good piece of art. With the only purpose of the beautiful itself.
image by Chiara Cappetta
words by Sarah K.
