What is the purpose of art? What should artists work for? Elizabeth Catlett has her answer:
Art can’t be the exclusive domain of the elect. It has to belong to everyone. Otherwise it will continue to divide the privileged from the underprivileged, Blacks from Chicanos, and both from rural, ghetto, and middle-class whites. Artists should work to the end that love, peace, justice, and equal opportunity prevail all over the world; to the end that all people take joy in full participation in the rich material, intellectual, and spiritual resources of this world’s lands, peoples, and goods. (Quoted from Elizabeth Catlett: In the Image of the People, p. 33.)
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For a brief biography of Elizabeth Catlett, click here.
Do these divisions stem from the Art itself, or from the people. The 20th century has no shortage of examples of Art designed to erase the divisions between people, most of it Propaganda.
Posted by: William Helg | December 12, 2006 at 04:50 PM