All Art is Political, Even Rothko 

the point is, your entire life has always been influenced by politics, whether you were priveleged emough to not see it, or otherwise 4:09

​@@daviddas6846, and how do you get from that point to all art being political?

@@JNCressey so in some way or the other, every experience in life that you had, was there because of the politics of your city, country area or whatever Every single piece of art, paint, music, dance or comedy, the creator of that was also affected by politics. I am learning to play piano and compose music and get into contemporary music myself, and when I had that thought, that the music i make and will make is in some way or the other inspired by these experiences which are influenced by politics. It sounds strange but what area of my life wasn't at all affected by politics. Its still a debatable topic

@@daviddas6846, that's politics having an affect on art. Not art being political.

@@JNCressey oh shit right i gotta rewatch and retrospect

First a disclaimer: I reserve the right to change my opinions on art and art theory forever. I'm constantly learning. The question is whether the object itself is political or the discourse around it is political? My answer is that the object is a form of communication, so responses to that communication are implied by the objects existence. At least part of what makes one object art and another object not art is that art provokes conversations by either asking a philosophical question or attempting an answer. Because that discourse is an essential part of the artwork itself, I don't see a distinction between the work of art and meaning imposed on it by the viewer. I hope that makes sense.

Why does it frighten and annoy you that art is inherently political? This is not a value judgement, or even an interpretation. It's like saying the atmosphere brings weather, it doesn't mean all is created equal, or that you experience it the same as anyone else. Simply the act of creating art is political. Sharing an emotional expression from a unique human perspective is a political act, conscious or not.

Thanks. I'm glad you recognize that this is more of an intellectual game than a sincere argument. Something provocative to introduce a story I wanted to tell about the way art was used for political purposes.

@@AmorSciendi which I can honestly say as a student myself. there is nothing better to get a class full of late teens and 20 somethings on board with a lesson than to wake them up with a controversy lol

Finally someone gets it personally everything I draw never has anything to do with politics I typically take inspiration from very vivid dreams I occasionally have or from something I saw during a psychedelic trip

you and what ever you were inspired by was influenced by politics. Everything you do is too. Everything is political in one way or another.

@@notabotiswear6980 Not everyone is politically inspired. Some make it a rule to keep away from politics.

@@skiwalker9041 even that, believe it or not is a political stance whether u like it or not. I wish i could tell you something else but that is just a fact/

​@@skiwalker9041you cant be apolitical at all pal, even the simpliest of things are political, you wanted or not we are political animals, you wont be the exception

The video fails its supposed intent right away, by failing to provide a definition of "political" - intellectually dishonest or incompetent perhaps?

@@christianschmitz5261 I agree. This is the result of the Marxist-affected Humanities department having taken over the fine arts in the past few decades.

@@vinayseth5899 Yes, it would seem so. But why is this the case? Is it a mere case of the often mentioned 'Capitalism fatigue'? Is it because of a deliberate subversion of 'Western' institutions? A combination of both perhaps? Or something entirely different? What is the bigger picture - beyond the apparent 'clash of ideologies'?

@@christianschmitz5261 The bigger picture entails the subjugation of the arts under the Humanities department, which is basically the corrupt, religious wing of the western university system.

"Rothko, like any good artist, was well attuned to the zeitgeist of his times and culture" - making his every brushstroke a political act.

Saying that something can be "apolitical" is like saying that something can be "acultural". It doesn't really make sense. How can you escape culture, it's even part of our language. Politics gives us the framework for our lives, what we can do and what we are doing on a moment-to-moment basis.

@@romanski5811 You must have a very sad life if you seriously allow politics to dictate your day to day life

@@michaelprez3811 Well, if you don't buy things in stores, don't drive cars and you live alone in the woods and you have no regard for any laws, then be my guest. I'd consider such a life completely outside the purview of any politics to be much sadder tbh. But the fact, that you typed this over the internet on a device whose creation and safety guidelines etc. are politically regulated, tells me that politics does define your life (like everyone else's because you can't escape that) even though you claim it doesn't. Being "apolitical" is like being "acultural". It's literally impossible. How can you be/do something without any single part of any culture present. Even just using language is cultural. It's impossible to be without any culture whatsoever, much like it is impossible to be without any politics whatsoever.

@@romanski5811 life is more that politics if we were to limit ourselves to just seeing everything politically we would not be humans we would be meaningless robots with nothing

@@darkspiro6467 I don't understand the inference. That seems like a total non sequitur to me. Just because everything is political doesn't mean that I'm a meaningless robot, quite the contrary. Having the freedom and opportunity to create art and music is thanks to the politics that allows that to happen. In fact, seeing things for how they really are allows us to recognize that child poverty for example is a political policy choice and can be eliminated through child tax credits for example. More children from poor families will get access to musical instruments and education, if we view the lack of these things as an inherently political circumstance, because that is exactly what it is. Viewing things through an "apolitical lens" makes people believe that they deserve the plight they're in. They're then more likely to fall for the just-world fallacy. If only more people would view things as political, then we could create so much more meaning and better life quality for people. Better working conditions, more free time for family, better health care. All of life is political. Things can change for the better.

Well, when you look at it from a larger perspective the way we all live is political with the general populations unconscious ideology and the sociological structure of the society. So really all we consume and see is political. Even our deep, personal relationships with sexual/romantic partners, friends, or family are determined somewhat by cultural and social structures. Even what we eat is political and what clothes we wear. Even our feelings and empathy are determined by social and political structures. And All art is a manifestation of the conditions of the life of the artist- so i would say that all art is indirectly political.

@Ostrava_Of_Boletaria cry harder

I didn't expect a porn artist to make a critique Abt art and it's connection to politics

The argument isn't fully serious. But all art exists in a political context and is discussed within that political context. And that discussion is where the meaning of an art work is made. I'm not as convinced by Schopenhauer as you seem to be. There are more ways to view art than art dreamt of in Schopenhauer's philosophy. If my argument came off as promoting a narrow view as well, then this is my mistake. I was hoping to show that this is one way among many to view the role of art in the world. Just as the abstract paintings discussed here have many possible interpretations.

@@AmorSciendi I agree, there are many ways to view art- Plato believed that art is deceptive and antithetical to reality and kant believed art is for the purposes of expressing the soul. There are a lot of ways to view art because the appreciation of the thing is subjective; however, I'm of the school of thought that believes the meaning of art is objective. I do not agree that art is political though, because art must answer for itself and not be contextualized. An example of this is Goya's black paintings, they were found on the wall paper of his dining room posthumously, when the investigators came to find Goya dead on his bed and devoid of context as to what they saw, how were they able to come to the conclusion that what they saw was art and not simply the scribbling of a mad man because Goya became deranged in his old age. How do we begin to separate Goya's black paintings from what we may see in a modern mental institution? Paintings and art are a visual modality, they can't be explained into words because words are the wrong format for art. When we see it and we know it is art because the thing answers for itself without context. You could bring it down and say that all art exists in a political context and is discussed as so but then if you do that, you're personalizing it and if so it becomes opinionated and nonfactual. It becomes the individual's politics rather than the objective meaning of art, you've co-opted the work of art and assigned as your own, cutting out the original creators meaning and intention for your own, Which is dishonest. Politics should not take center stage in life because life like art is so much more.

I'd say that politics are transcendent and not so contextual. History has patterns, governments have systems based on theories based on theories, politics can be seen as an extrapolation of philosophy. It's our philosophies that determine our values and policies. Politics aren't just representative of specific times and our presence is how our world functions. And our world is the most universally experienced thing across all of humanity

It's political in that all art tries to make an argument for what is important and worthy of our attention and worthy of community discourse. Political in the way Hannah Aren't would use the word.

@@AmorSciendi oh sorry, I didn’t know they changed that word to mean something else, sorry English is not my first language, what I meant to say was whatever word that describes let’s say Nazi sanctioned art, or maybe art commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte for propaganda purposes, or that is related or produced by a movement like the anarchists in France, etc., that has to have a different word describing it, right? Well Rothko is the opposite of that, or not “that word” whichever one it is nowadays.

@@imambaybars3405 agreed. It's not propaganda, though it was used in a propaganda campaign, but it still focuses the attention of a political (civic) community in a direction by saying "subjective individual freedom of thought is important and worthy of preserving in our civic structures"

@@AmorSciendi you know, when I look at Rothko’s work, and apart from its artistic influence on the viewer, I just can’t stop thinking about the incredibly intelligent lengths he went through to prevent not only conversation about it, but even a conversation within the viewer’s intellect about any interpretation or attachment of any meaning to the paint on the canvas, he knew that having a message of any kind cheapens art, and I agree with him. But I understand that art historians have to have something to say about it, so sometimes when they can’t find something in the work itself, they emphasize a drama in the artist’s life or sometimes they just make shit up. How much misunderstanding about art was created just so art historians could have something insightful to say. Please don’t take it personally you seem like a nice guy, and I would have liked to be a student in your class when I was back in school, we could’ve had a lot of fun conversations. But in general this is my opinion of art historians.