My husband and I have collected political art together for 25 years, most of it created by artists living or working in Maine which has a history as an art colony. The original artists, the Wabanaki, maintain continuous traditions and the very act of doing so in the face of attempted genocide is political. So is the climate-linked decline of the brown ash tree whose bark is used in basketmaking.
In the colonizer tradition, artists have been moving to Maine for generations because the land stolen from Wabanaki people was "cheap" and the cost of living and maintaining studio space so much lower than in the cities they came from.
What is the role of art in political action?
Many successful political movements of the 20th century had outstanding aesthetics but conveyed meaning you and I might find disgusting. Filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl's politics sucked, but her mastery of the film medium is undeniable.
Other artists on behalf of the Nazis mimicked highly successful Russian revolution design elements and palettes.
Nowadays we see political art like innovative films from Palestinian resistance groups effective at attracting sympathizers and supporters.
We see graphic designers going all out to bring the reality of genocide in Gaza to complacent Westerners who are busy having brunch.
We see graffiti artists using media that were and sometimes still are considered criminal.
Mural in Gaza, artists unknown
Can arts organizations expect our support if they fail in this hour to stand with the oppressed?
At least two organizations that I know of in Maine have had internal discussions where Zionist members attempt to control the narrative if it veers from hasbara i.e. positive pr for Israel. Other members push back as there is an actual genocide happening and we, the U.S. taxpayers, are funding it. People who can't deal with conflict retreat and stick with "safe" subjects -- a p0litical act in itself.
Banksy mural in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, 2015. The artist explained that many people only want to look at pictures of kittens on the internet, so he painted a kitten playing with a tangle of metal cables amid the rubble from Israel's bombings. Photo credit: Suhaib Salem / Reuters
An artist friend told me a gallery owner asked her to exhibit a triptych she'd painted early in the "War on Terror" without the middle panel of three, which dramatically but semi-abstractly depicted airstrikes. She declined.
Another artist friend who shows her work frequently commented, "No one wants to buy political art."
Many have argued that didactic art -- created to make a point -- isn't real art.
Others have argued that if it's real art, it was created to make a point. Possibly an obscure point about the purpose and nature of art. Possibly a point that requires thinking and considering to tease out.
Or not. As reported by researcher Christian Appy in Patriots, an oral history of the Vietnamese war from many viewpoints:
Every major North Vietnamese combat unit included several artists and entertainers. These singers, musicians, painters, writers, and actors traveled south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail not as separate artistic "troupes," but mixed in among the regular troops, with whom they lived and sometimes fought.
And one of the regular soldiers told Appy they always wondered where the U.S. military's artists were. How did the troops keep their morale up without art? (Short answer: they didn't.)
How will we keep our morale up to continue the struggle against empire and its Zionist holocaust?
