The Politics of Art

“All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS. What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’ We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics,’ made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something.” Legend Toni Morrison on Art and the Artist

Maya Angelou. Amiri Baraka. Mark Twain. Tupac Amaru Shakur. Allen Ginsberg. Joni Mitchell. Revolutionaries, renaissance artist or political leaders? The Matrix. V is for Vendetta. Toni Morrison's Beloved? Langston Hughes The Ways of White Folks. Prince's ‘Sign of the Times’? NWA's ‘F%$k the Police’. Artwork, manifestos or political treatises?

In the art of American politics, the virtue of checks and balances is extolled. The press is widely panned as the ‘4th Estate’ after the judicial, executive and legislative branches of govern. But, the most powerful estate is that of arts and culture, or art as the means by which culture is exported. The arts are the pathway to the 6th dimension. It is the work of free spirits to pull from alternative realities and merge into the blandness of man’s governing body. Arts and culture are how the gifts of the spirits are merged into the mendacity of everyday life. Artists are the timeless gatekeepers of humanity in the societies of mankind.

"It's the calm before the storm right here... Racism's the only thing he's fantastic for 'Cause that's how he gets his f**king rocks off and he's orange Yeah, sick tan That's why he wants us to disband 'Cause he cannot withstand The fact we're not afraid of Trump F**k walkin' on egg shell" Eminem’s fantastic verbal ratta-ta-ta-tat attacks Trump in freestyle 01:11

“That all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was ‘No, no, no; there’s only aesthetics.’ My point is that it has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world. And it’s not just the narrative, it’s not just the story; it’s the language and the structure and what’s going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story.” Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, Toni Morrison, on Art and the Artist

“And the night will fall, this is death to you all/ When the nighttime falls, this the final call/ This the final call, call, call.

The final call, see reparations will be tooken/ Now it ain't no fun when the rabbit got the gun, ha/ Motherf%$kers, trip this” Snoop Dogg, Lavender

In authoritarian regimes, totalitarian states and fascist states, expression of human soul will spill outside the lines of police states and onto the pages, canvasses, video screens, social media pages, graphic designs, music. When politics lacks total art and is in fact, solely a means of state control, well... then DJs, painters, entrepreneurs, creatives, sculptors, academics, intellectuals become leaders of social, the spiritual, the marginalized. Creative faculty is the spirit by which resistance to authoritarian control manifests. Publishers and producers become de facto gatekeepers of culture. In fact their largess is expanded metaphusocally within spiritual, emotional and real worlds. Art and artists are the vanguard for the politics and limits of expression and spirit - for which there are none.

- Milton 510 Bowens

This generation is no less. In an era of where federal control amassed at the executive, judicial and legislative branches really is a means by which individual expression is siphoned and the human soul is straight jacketed.

"My mama always used to tell me: 'If you can't find somethin' to live for, you best find somethin' to die for.” Tupac Amuru Shakur

Artists are always commentating or responding to the spirit and extra dimensions or planes of human expression. They are the revolutiinaries with titles or designations as poet, author, painter, artist or musician.

As they respond to existing at or occurring in the same period of time. events and politics, the arts take on political as well as social dimensions, becoming themselves a focus of controversy and even a force of political as well as social change.

“We don't believe you 'cause we the people/ Are still here in the rear, ayo, we don't need you/ You in the killing-off-good-young-nigga mood/ When we get hungry we eat the same fucking food/ The ramen noodle/ Your simple voodoo is so maniacal/ We're liable to pull a juju” A Tribe Called Quest, We the People

Karen Seneferu, curator of the Black Woman is God, a vibration at the highest possible frequency

“For where thou art, there is the world itself, With every several pleasure in the world, And where thou art not, desolation.” ― William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 2