A Plea For Irresponsibility

A Plea For Irresponsibility - Ewa Kuryluk

From the book 'The Subversive Imagination - Artists, Society and Social Responsibility' Edited by Carol Becker

‘At twelve I decided to become an artist. No doubt, my loss of faith was the first step towards art. Ever since I have been convinced that art makes sense, if at all, only when it uses personal perception to counter the power of some collective belief.’ (page 13)

• Becoming a skeptic and losing her faith in Stalinism is what drove her to creating art. 
• It suggests that there must be a driving force or a strong belief you have to truly be an artist. 
• Used as a method of rebellion. 

‘Of course, every artist is also a political creature. No one can jump out of his/her skin - white or yellow, black or red - and in this sense every artist is a medium of his/her time and place. But this doesn’t mean that all art is political.’ (page 18)

• ‘every artist is also a political creature’ is this in the sense that they all have opinions or is it that they have the power to get across an opinion if they wanted to?
• What is the actual meaning of ‘political’ if not all art has to be political but all artists are political creatures?
• Can the word ‘political’ have a meaning other than the government or a country’s public affairs? Personal politics?

‘The artist is a captive of his or her class consciousness in Marxist aesthetics only. In the modern world the artist - independent, solitary, and peripheral - tends to be the moving spirit of cultural change.’ (page 18)

• The modern view is that the artist is an individual and drives the development of cultures, this goes against the Marxist ideology that the artist is a product of the present. 
• This opinion tells us that artists are able to influence the future and drive change. 

Stalinism: the ideology and policies adopted by Stalin, based on centralization, totalitarianism, and the pursuit of communism.
Personal politics: specific ways one particular human deals with and responds to interaction with other humans.