Art as a Weapon

Eric Drooker and the persistence of the committed artist

By John W. Stuart 

Art Threat

October 19, 2011

 

There is a particularly cynical groan that comes out of a critic’s voice when the term politics is paired with art or music, especially when the politics in question is current. When politics is buried beneath layers of conceptual academic skulduggery it is much easier to swallow. If it is historical it can also pass – otherwise terms like agit-prop, doctrinaire, and didactic are used with abandon.

This attitude may be a side effect of the post-war boom years, or maybe it was the rise of theory-based art education, which turned its back on craft in favour of lofty intellectual pretensions. Regardless of where it comes from, it is clearly myopically misguided in a world where civil rights are eroding as fast as arable land.

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