Art and Propaganda:
Using Fear and the Classic Tools of Persuasion

 By Milton Glaser  (The Nation)

 

A while ago, I was looking for a definition of art’s purpose. I came across one that I liked; in fact, I liked it so much that I used it for the title of a film that was made about my work. It’s from Horace, the Roman philosopher and critic, who wrote, “The purpose of art is to inform and delight.” I’ve been thinking about the purpose of art all my life and Horace helped me to arrive at an understanding. Art is a survival mechanism for the human species. Otherwise, it never would have lasted so long.

But how does it work? How does it affect us? Primarily, it makes us attentive to the reality of our own life. The first cave paintings made its viewers attentive to the spirit and character of the animals their lives depended on.

Sixteen thousand years later, Picasso's painting of the bombing of Guernica made us conscious of how cruel the death of the innocent could be. Picasso and Cezanne help us understand that things can be looked at from several points of view at the same time. When we pass a landscape and think of how much it resembles a Cezanne painting, we become aware that Cezanne has made us attentive to how we see a landscape. Picasso and Seurat anticipated and illuminated the science of the 19th century, demonstrating that a landscape is an accumulation of color fragments and spaces. Art may be the only truth we can ever know.

The experience of art can be considered a form of meditation. By suppressing the debris of everyday life and the illusion that desire creates, meditation enables us to observe without judging. In this way, what is real to us becomes visible.

Recollecting Horace’s description of art’s purpose, he said, “To inform and delight”, and not, “to persuade and delight". Informing us makes us stronger. Persuading us robs us of our ability to observe things for ourselves. Propaganda cannot be described without its link to persuasion.  (read full article) 



“I am merely pointing to the fact that, in England, popular imaginative literature is a field that left-wing thought has never begun to enter.

All fiction from the novels in the mushroom libraries downwards is censored in the interests of the ruling class.



And boys’ fiction above all, the blood-and-thunder stuff which nearly every boy devours at some time or other, is sodden in the worst illusions of 1910.

The fact is only unimportant if one believes that what is read in childhood leaves no impression behind.”

George Orwell, "All Art Is Propaganda"



The Italian Renaissance:

Wealthy Renaissance Patrons Used Art for Power

Alina Cohen_(Artsy)

While centuries of scholars have parsed the meanings and symbols within Italian Renaissance artworks and architecture, their mere existence also testifies to the era’s power structures and distribution of wealth. The very act of commissioning an artist to design a building, sculpture, or painting signified the patron’s taste, erudition, financial status, and ambition. The clues found both inside and outside these works offer insight into the hierarchies and values that shaped the warring city-states of 15th and 16th century Italy.

In the 15th century, the Medici family of Florence rose to prominence after amassing a fortune in banking, an industry they revolutionized with the introduction of a double-entry bookkeeping system, one that is still used today. By 1434, Cosimo de’ Medici had become one of the wealthiest people in Italy, and the region’s unofficial ruler, a position he retained until his death 30 years later. His lineage (which included four popes) are considered perhaps the greatest private patrons of the Renaissance and in the history of art.  

Much like propaganda in Medieval times, propaganda in the Renaissance has a religious focus. The Renaissance was a time of peace, where the arts flourished.  There was no need for political propaganda. Religious art of all kinds were painted, sculpted, and crafted.
The European Renaissance was influenced by the Christian religion; nearly all of Europe was Christian. Therefore, the art developed in that time was meant to depict bible scenes, religious messages, and promote the religion. 

Christianity was meant to be portrayed as the ONLY way of living, and that was what the art was meant to do; change peoples opinions about it, making it religious propaganda. (read full article)

"The problem with avant-gard is knowing who's putting on who."

 Bill Watterson 

The Theater as Propaganda

 

"I am haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest
and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world."

Henry James: (The Fraud of Avon)

Whilst William Shakespeare's works have inspired countless other writers, his own life is a blank sheet of paper. Most of what we know of him is in his guise as a minor businessman in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon in the English Midlands, where he was generally known as William SHAKSPERE.

As William SHAKESPEARE the famous writer of Elizabethan London, he is an elusive and ghostly figure, a puzzling conundrum whose biography appears wrought with contradictions and frustrating gaps. There is no record, for instance, of anybody claiming to personally know this Shakespeare during his lifetime, despite his fame and renown.

Perhaps odder still, nobody who knew Shakspere the illiterate provincial businessman from Stratford seems to have been aware that he was a famous writer. Everywhere in the biography of the author we are confronted with this dichotomy between what appears to be two very different Shakespeares.

The Stratford Shakspere, by all accounts we have, is a small and mean-spirited man. He is constantly in court over minor legal wranglings. He is a moneylender and serial tax-dodger. He hoards grain during a famine. He abandons his own young children and cruelly leaves his wife Anne only his second-best bed in his will. 

In contrast, the London Shakespeare is a man of grand ideas and imagination, a man who tackles the big universal themes with a breathtaking insight and empathy, a man with a profound and enduring appreciation for both the best and worst of the human condition. It is difficult to reconcile this great Shakespeare with the petty-minded businessman from Stratford.

  Shakespeare’s Histories

Many of Shakespeare’s Histories drew their inspiration from a contentious period in English history: the War of the Roses, and the years leading up to it. It is worth reviewing this important, yet complicated history before engaging in Shakespeare’s History plays such as The Tragedy of Richard III, Henry IV, Henry V, or Henry VI. Shakespeare assumed his audience was already familiar with the history of the monarchs and their conflicts.

It is also important to note that Shakespeare’s histories often painted former monarchs in an exaggerated light, especially for theatrical effect. In Shakespeare’s world, the Tudor Dynasty reigned supreme. It was crucial that the story of the Tudors be shown in a positive light to avoid the displeasure of the Queen; if any of these playwrights wanted to keep their heads on their shoulders.

Shakespeare's Richard III as Propaganda

When you read the history about Richard III, he was not quite the villain that Shakespeare made him out to be. Shakespeare's sources for the play, such as Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, and Sir Thomas More's 'History of King Richard the Thirde', were political propaganda against Richard and the House of York. 

This propaganda was necessary to legitimise the House of Tudor, and the new King of England, Henry VII and any heirs, such as Henry VIII and later Queen Elizabeth I. What better way than to establish the legitimacy of your reign than to smear the reputation of your defeated foe, in books and later in plays?

Richard III was not the villain that Shakespeare created. The murderous hunchback that the Tudors created to strengthen their claim to the throne was way more myth than factual. They gave him physical deformities in paintings, accused him of the murder of his nephews (if the trial were to happen today he would be absolved from his crime because there isn't any evidence now and there wasn't any then), and paid a famous playwright to put down the name Richard III in infamy. He was certainly tough and well versed in inflicting death but so was his entire generation that grew up in war torn England where families were pitted against each other and betrayal was rampant.

Shakespeare's Macbeth as Propaganda

Interestingly, Shakespeare wrote Macbeth as a tribute to King James, the new monarch of England at the time.  When Shakespeare wrote the play, he included several elements that would have appealed to the king: witchcraft and ancestry.  First, King James was previously interested in demonology, including witchcraft.  Several witches had been foiled in their attempt to place on a curse on James when he was king of Scotland.  As a result, James wrote a text entitled Demonology, which was offered to the public as his treatise on witchcraft.

Although Shakespeare's Macbeth was based on the real-life Scottish King, the two share very little in common. The most significant difference between the true Macbeth and Shakespeare's fictional character is the thirst for power. Shakespeare's version of Macbeth would stop at nothing to get to the throne. He went on a killing rampage and made many decisions that the real Macbeth would have never made.

The real Macbeth was a kindhearted, good leader who was well respected by the people of his country. Shakespeare's version of the real-life Duncan was also very different from the way he was in real life. Shakespeare's version of Duncan was very kind and a great leader, while in reality, he was unsuccessful as a king and did not have the support and trust that Shakespeare's version portrayed.

Macbeth’s actions were not unusual for a Scottish king in this era of blood and strife, but his story is certainly made all the more famous as a result of Shakespeare’s dramatic attentions. While not the tyrant portrayed in the play, Macbeth claimed the throne through ruthless force, carving out a reign in a bloody and turbulent time in Scottish history.