Jan 202010
Our political world is surrounded by art and images we put together with different meanings, (eg: a good leader). Leaders have used artwork to persuade us in many ways for many many years.
How does art created for a dictator differ from art created for a freely elected leader? In what was is it the same?
Well, you could argue that in a democratic state there’s a higher chance of unflattering art being produced. While under a dictator, unless you have a death wish, artwork tends to be an idealised form!
Art created for a dictator has only one purpose: it is to present the dictator’s policies in such a way as to impress or seduce the viewer into accepting them. In a free society, art has many “purposes” (or no purpose at all), self-expression being one of the main ones. Propaganda art is often inferior in artistic values and creativity–look at some of the crap that was produced in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. This is not always the case, as you would see in the revolutionary and Napoleonic paintings of David. But the artistry in these cases is always secondary to the propaganda. Also, you almost never get anything daring and new in propaganda art.
I’ll make my answer short. If a person creates
artwork for a dictator, his punishment will be
quite severe if it is disliked by the creator. Not
so bad otherwise.
art created for dictators often portray them(the dictator) or their ideology…it is often refer to as a form of propaganda…
as for art that are created by freely elected leader varies from subject to subject. It all depends on the artist, since he has no political influence and pressure. Though if a certain artist holds the leader in high esteem than he will portray him as a highly important person
though a thing to notice is that often in Dictatorial art..the dictators are often portray as though they are almost god like…………..while artist in a freely elect society would also paint his leader, but to certain extent..highlighting his quality but still retain his humanity.