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How art can be used as activism

I have always been an art lover—though I never quite mastered my painting skills in middle school art class, I always found it fun to have a creative outlet to express myself in school. One of my favorite parts about taking AP European History in my senior year of high school was that my teacher would talk about the art being created at the time and how that reflected the important events going on in that time period. I love going to museums with my friends and seeing all types of art, whether it be a classic painting or some avant-garde modern art. In general, I’ve connected with art deeply.

This makes a lot of sense—according to Stephen Duncombe’s article “Does It Work? The Æffect of Activist Art,” art ties directly to the viewer’s emotions. This makes it a good way to communicate a message, whether that message is as simple as the beauty of nature or as complex as an important societal issue. It can even move people to discuss an issue with their peers or inspire people to organize to make change for the issue represented in the art. When art is advocating for a cause important to the artist, it is known as activist art.

Activist art has been around for a while. The popular artist Francis Bacon used his art to express his homosexuality during a time when it was illegal in his country to be gay. According to Rina Arya in the essay “Constructions of Homosexuality in the Art of Francis Bacon,” his “Triptych August 1972” is seen as his “coming out” art, and his popular “Two Figures” is an explicitly gay piece of art. By displaying his homosexuality in a bold and obvious way, Bacon was advocating for normalizing something that at the time was shunned by society. Undoubtedly, his art can be seen as a form of activism.

Analyzing activist art has made me consider how I can use it in my own life. I am currently enrolled in a College Writing seminar at American University, and for my class, I was tasked with creating a piece of activist art and writing an essay about it. I chose to advocate for the funding of arts programs in K-12 education. Since the Great Recession, arts programs have been severely underfunded since schools have placed more focus on their common core subjects according to Rogers et al. in their essay “Overburdened and Underfunded: California Public Schools Amidst the Great Recession.” At the same time, employers have started to value skills learned in arts courses more—according to an article by Mary Tamer in Harvard Ed. Magazine, many current employers see creativity as one of the most valuable skills a job candidate can have, and these types of skills are learned in art classes. 

This issue is dear to my heart, too. I have taken art classes since kindergarten, and I can’t imagine my life without them. Specifically, music classes have shaped my educational career. I went from being the vice president of my high school orchestra in my senior year to deciding to pick up a double major in music during college. I think that by choosing such an important issue to me, it will help benefit the art that I eventually make for this class.

Though I have not yet finished my art project, I have plans to create something that’s sort of a celebration of art itself. I want to create a vlog-inspired short film that incorporates me explaining how art education has affected my life. From anecdotes about my childhood to live videos of me creating or using art in my life, I want to highlight both the big and small effects that art education has on my life. I will make sure to update this blog with my reflections on the finished project.

It’s important to me that every child in America has access to a thorough art education, regardless of whether or not they plan to go into the arts. I hope that this project can inspire someone else to care a little bit more too.

Works Cited

Arya, Rina. “Constructions of Homosexuality in the Art of Francis Bacon”. Journal for Cultural Research  vol. 16, no. 1, January 2012. EBSCOhost, https://web.s.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=20&sid=f9cc5b13-512d-410e-8265-a70f1a80b70c%40redis 

Duncombe, Stephen. “Does It Work? The Æffect of Activist Art.” Social Research, vol. 83, no. 1, Spring 2016, pp. 115–34. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.c

Rogers, John, Rhoda Freelon, and Melanie Bertrand. "Overburdened and Underfunded: California Public Schools Amidst the Great Recession." REMIE Multidisciplinary Journal of Educational Research, vol. 2, no. 2, 2012, pp. 152-176. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/overburndened-underfunded-california-public/docview/1034721740/se-2.

Tamer, Mary. “On the Chopping Block, Again.” Harvard Graduate School of Education, https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/09/06/chopping-block-again.