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Art essay EssayDoes device imitate animateness or is it the opposite way around? Traditionally, we have believed that art imitates life. The painter represents what he or she sees by producing a scene on a canvas. The sculpturer does the same with bronze or stone. A photographer or film maker does it even to a greater extent directly. A writer describes life in his or her harbors. This simple concept is known as mimesis. But some have questioned the one-way nature of mimesis by arguing that art also changes the way we overtake the world, and in fact, life some quantify imitates art rather than the other way around. The person who first articulated this belief progenyively was Oscar Wilde. Speaking about the befuddled conditions in London in the late 19th century, he wrote that the way we perceive them changed because of art. Referring to the wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas lamps and round houses into shadows he argued that poet s and painters have taught people the loveliness of such effects. According to Wilde, They did not exist till Art had invented them. picAnd you dont have to look too distant to see anti-mimesis in our lives. To what extent is our outlook on life altered by ideas we read in books? The portrayal of people in films? The styles we see in fashion photography? One great fashion model of this is the TV series The Sopranos, and how it affected both the Mafia in the USA and the FBI. Arts typeset to work on society propaganda and censorship Throughout history, it has always been the case that art has the power to change society, especially when new media are used to express an idea.During the first off World War, for example, movie cameras were used for the first time to record trench warfare when the film was shown in picture palaces in Britain, audiences ran out screaming. This led to the government censoring further such use of such a powerful medium. And in government censorship, and use of art as propaganda, we see how seriously governments take the effect of art. All of the major dictators of the C20th understood the power of art to influence the population. In Nazi Germany, Hitler set up the Ministry of Propaganda and National Enlightenment.It was headed by Goebbels, who made sure that zero point was published, performed, or exhibited without his approval. picWhen this happens, you know there isnt going to be a happy ending And what Goebbels approved, of course, exactly fit in with Nazi ideology and ideas. In terms of art, this meant no modern and abstract art, certainly nothing hostile to the regime, and nothing that featured images other than the stereotypical blonde-haired, blue eyed set in idyllic pastoral scenes of blissful happiness. pic picIn Stalinist Russia, there was also a keen understanding of the power of art. Art portrayed contented peasants, unflagging workers, and Stalin himself. In fact, Stalin was shown god-like in many paintings, a phenomenon known as the Cult of Stalin. Just as in Germany, gigantic architectural projects expressed the power of the state. pic pic However, there is no doubt that in Russia there were greater delicious achievements than in Nazi Germany. Composers worked with fewer hindrances as seen in the works by Prokoviev and Shostakovich, and film-makers such as Eisenstein emerged.Arts influence on society the trial of skirt Chatterleys Lover But even under less(prenominal) oppressive governments, the artistic expression of certain ideas can be subject to control. One great example is the book Lady Chatterleys Lover by DH Lawrence, which was deemed offensive on many levels. In this book, Constance Reid, a woman from a progressive liberal middle class family marries a minor member of the aristocracy, Lord Clifford Chatterley, and takes the title Lady Chatterley. But her husband is injured in the First World War, confined to a wheelchair, and left impotent.Despite this, he becomes a success ful writer and businessman. It is more his obsession with financial success and fame rather than any physical difficulties which come between him and his wife, and she begins an inter-group communication with their gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. The largely aristocratic establishment of Britain at the time the book was published in Italy in 1928 were shocked by many aspects of the book. First, there was the fact that the book was obscene, in the way it went into explicit detail the affair that took place (see below).Second, there was the fact that a women was breaking her marriage vows, something considered far worse than a man behaving in the same way. Finally, it represented an intimate blood between a member of the lower classes (although it emerges during the story that Mellors is actually well-educated, and became an officer in the army during the First World War) and the upper classes, a concept that was tout ensemble taboo in Britain at that time. The book was duly banned. pic But the book was republished by Penguin books in 1960.The attorney general, Reginald Manningham-Buller (dubbed Bullying-Manners by the journalist and author Bernard Levin) had to read only four chapters to decide to prosecute Penguin books for publishing it. What annoyed him was not just the content, but the fact that the price of the book meant it was affordable to women and members of the lower classes (remember that only few women worked at this time, and husbands were generally in charge of family finances). The trial was a disaster for Manningham-Buller and the prosecution.They had failed to find any experts to support their case, in stark contrast to Penguins defence team, which had brought in authors, journalists, academics, and even members of the clergy to defend the book. Manningham-Buller and his team had very little idea of what Lawrence had been trying to express in his book, regularly being caught out by the brilliant insight of the witnesses they were trying to catch out. And although they tried to shock the jury in his opening speech, Manningham-Buller announced The word fuck or fucking appears no less than 30 times . . .Cunt 14 times balls 13 times shit and arse six times a put together cock four times piss three times, and so on. they were unable to prove that the book would have a negative influence on the readers it was aimed at. According to the Guardian No other jury verdict in British history has had such a deep social impact. Over the next three months Penguin sold 3m copies of the book an example of what many years later was described as the Spycatcher effect, by which the attempt to suppress a book through unsuccessful litigation serves only to grow huge sales.The jury that iconic representative of democratic society had given its imprimatur to ending the taboo on sexual discussion in art and entertainment. Within a few years the stifling censorship of the theatre by the lord chamberlain had been abolished, and a gritty r ealism emerged in British cinema and drama. (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning came out at the same time as the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley, and very soon Peter Finch was commenting on Glenda Jacksons drop old tits in Sunday Bloody Sunday and Ken Tynan said the first fuck on the BBC.) Homosexuality was decriminalised, abortions were available on reasonable demand, and in order to obtain a divorce it was unnecessary to prove that a spouse had committed the matrimonial crime of adultery. Judges no longer put on black caps to sentence prisoners to hang by the neck until dead. Can we say, though, that it was art in this case that changed society, or was it an interaction between human sciences (ie, the law) and the humanities (the book) that led to change? This is from the same Guardian article the message of Lady Chatterleys Lover, half a century after the trial, is that literature in itself does no pervert at all.The damage that gets attributed to books and to plays and movies an d cartoons is caused by the actions of people who try to suppress them. See The trial of Lady Chatterleys Lover The effect of art presentation pic What other piece of art has profoundly changed the way we view the world? And was it the art that did it, or the way it was used that made the impact? Use the link below to support you introduce to us an influential piece of art. Think about the type of change it wrought, for example, ethical, social, metaphysical, etc.