1. Artistic Currents and Milieus and Social Movements
- Author
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Justyne Balasinski, Lilian Mathieu, Centre Max Weber (CMW), École normale supérieure de Lyon (ENS de Lyon)-Université Lumière - Lyon 2 (UL2)-Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne (UJM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), David A. Snow, Donatella Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam
- Subjects
Situationism ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Political structure ,Art ,Colonialism ,[SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences ,Politics ,Aesthetics ,Vanguard ,Criticism ,Social science ,Communism ,Social movement ,media_common - Abstract
Artistic currents and social protest have long been intertwined. One of the most paradigmatic examples of similarities and proximities between those fields is surrealism. It appeared in the early 1920s as a movement, as it gathered on a collective basis various artists (poets, painters, filmmakers, carvers, photographers, etc.) who shared the same aesthetic principles. Those principles were expressed in manifestos that had been written by a charismatic leader, Andre Breton, whose authoritative methods led to repeated internal challenges, exclusions, and secessions. Like protesters who seek change to the social or political structure, the surrealists sought for a regeneration of the aesthetic norms of their time. Posing as an artistic vanguard, they violently challenged the dominant artistic forms of academism using provocation, scandal, and disruption. But the surrealists did not restrict their criticism to the world of aesthetics; they also set out to challenge the political order by joining the communist movement and by participating in various mobilizations, for example, against colonial wars. Other artistic movements – such as Cobra or Situationism – have adopted the same form of a collective vanguard that intends to challenge both the aesthetic values and the political order. Keywords: civil rights; music; peace
- Published
- 2023