CHENNAI: Art is that gentle breeze that cools your sweating brow on a hot summer’s day. It is that lazily flowing stream in the lush forest that calms your frayed city nerves. It is all things beautiful to most of us. Seems hard then to imagine it being coloured by the politics of the day?
Long before there was writing, there was art that was moulded as propaganda material. So what did ancient civilisations have to propagate?
Their might, of course! Look at the Egyptian pyramids and all the art engraved on them — they sing the glories of the rulers and their golden reign. Medieval Greek sculptures and ancient Indian art reveal military successes. Engineered artworks leave behind convenient legacies.
When nations were birthed and the world erupted into a large battlefield, art donned the garb of patriotism to whip up passions strong enough to make citizens die for their country. The Nazis used art to create racist imagery during the Second World War, while the Americans illustrated the Japanese with distorted features. Hubert Lanzinger’s The Standard Bearer from 1933 even shows Hitler as a white knight in shining armour! In India, art was employed to unite the country during the Independence struggle, at a time when social media with its countless publicity options was nonexistent. Abanindranath Tagore’s Bharat Mata painting humanised the nation and the idea of the motherland served to inspire Indians in their fight for freedom.
During the icy years of the Cold War between America and Russia, art was one of the main weapons of attack when traditional methods of warfare lay unused. While the Americans tried to influence their people about the dangers of Communism through art, the Russians went ahead and even created a style to serve their needs. It was called Socialist Realism. Lenin believed that art belonged to the people and laid down rules for its practice with the prime focus on the enlightenment of the proletariat masses. Joseph Stalin took it a bit further and proclaimed that all art in Russia had to portray optimistic depictions of Soviet rule and life. The State thus dictated the direction in which art had to tread. Tragedy was erased from Russian canvases and replaced with bright flowers and smiling, toiling workers. Stalin’s heroic portraits were everywhere.
Do look around. What really has changed? Sculptures are installed in public places by incumbent governments of the champions of their respective parties in the hope that we would be constantly reminded of their presence as we go about our lives. Our street walls visually throb with colourful achievements of these leaders. Most propaganda however, can only be at odds with great art. For how can art that has been watered-down and created merely to serve political ideologies ever attain brilliance? How will history remember the artist who embodied another’s ideals? Art must not be the means to an end; the end being the manipulation of public opinion. It must never exist for borrowed reasons. Let art never bow to egos and idealistic narratives. May it stand with its head held high on its own feet