jells muse news

Art as a (w)hole

The last fifty years has brought a total revolution in artistic expression, from the quiet beginnings of the late fifties and early sixties through the turmoil of the late twentieth century. We have gone from censorship on all levels to the complete abandon of all sensibility of gangster rap, and one word script movies like ‘Scarface’.

The recent Super Bowl mishap and Imus faux pas have begun a rethinking of the need to put some limits on creativity, to make things ‘respectable’ once more. There is a certain amount of desperation in the need to do something that is truly new, not to mention the need to get attention. Artists find themselves searching for something that hasn’t been done a thousand times before, and we find them reaching into the unknown, which often involves that which has been taboo in the past.
They find themselves being outlandish in order to garner an audience, doing something shocking to be noticed. Where it will go from here is hard to say, the piercings and tattoos have been carried to such heights that its hard to see how those artifices could be escalated. And when you get right down to it, the adoption of those practices by the general public have made it almost beyond a fad to the common. Lets hope the censorship crowd doesn’t limit creativity and artistic freedom, and that the artists don’t lose touch with the difference between creative freedom and complete abandon.