ART: INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL ENGINEERING(PART ONE)

 ART as been defined as human creative skill or its application; the expression of human creative talent, especially in a visual form, and has served various roles in the history of man.

The oldest pictures in the world are over 20,000 years old; they were discovered early in the twentieth century and are pictures of hunters and animals.

The early man ascribed magical powers to art, he believed that the painted pictures will attract the animals so that they can be killed and eaten.

Until a few hundred years ago, most art works were of religious subjects; they were used to interpret the world’s religions, find meaning for existence, express beliefs and ideals, and to relate mankind to his universe and his God.

Then, during the Greek, Roman and the Renaissance periods, there evolved a mature, civilized and classical art; so-called because, mystery was abhorred and the dignity of the gods minimized.

“All interests centered on man, his doings, his pleasures and his feats. For the first time in the history of Art, the thinking man controlled.”

According to Sheldon Cheney’s: A New World History of Art, “It was the first mass challenge to ‘blind’ nature, and the First wide use of logical thought to solve human problems.”

This trend continued in art through the ages under different characterizations and has challenged another school of thought which seeks to confine art mainly to the visual qualities at the expense of the message. Should art be made mainly to satisfy the aesthetic yearnings of the society? A tendency, which currently manifests in the revival of traditional art forms by artists, or should it serve as a tool of socio-political engineering?

"No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It is an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.” –Pablo Picasso

The primary function of art lies in its service to humanity. Its aesthetics or commercial value cannot really be said to be of equal importance with this primary function. What this means is that the artist owes society a duty. Through his art, society is defined, redefined and redirected. It is in this sense that artists are sometimes seen as the conscience of society.

Miro and Masson in Cahier d’Art (no.1-4), a Paris art magazine in 1939, also opined that:

“There are no more Ivory towers. Withdrawal and aloofness can no longer be indulged… “The only justification for a work of art lies in the extent to which it contributes to the enlargement of man, to the transformation of all values, to the denunciation of social, moral and religious hypocrisy and thereby to the denunciation of the dominant class.”

Also, Dele Jegede, an artist and art historian opined that: “A facile display of techniques in these harrowing times is an avoidable indulgence. For the Visual artist, mastery of techniques and materials cannot, and should not, be a substitute for message and thrust. Otherwise he is a rambler who refuses to advance a thought through his art, or shudders from passing comments, or aims at no substantial specifics but revels in slavish celebration of mere technical proficiency.”

The history of radicalism in World art could be traced to the Renaissance. But in later years, great names such as the realist Goya, the romantic Gericault, the humorist Daumier and the multi-ism Picasso readily come to mind. Goya, in Los Caprichos, (a series of etchings) made in 1796-98, produced a series of attack on manners, customs and abuses in the church. Gericault, in the Raft of medusa captured a shipwreck which was a political scandal of his time.

Daumier, worked as a cartoonist in La Caricature and was imprisoned in 1832 for representing King Louis Philippe as Gargantuan.

Guernica (1937) by Pablo Picasso is a powerful protest against war. Back home, artists such as Akinola Lasekan and Demas Nwoko were thorns in the flesh of Colonial masters. In the late 50’s a group of undergraduates in the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, termed Zaria rebels, because they advocated for change also “displayed a high level of socio-political awareness by making visual remarks on the inhumanity of colonialism.”

Late Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Afro beat Maestro lived a life devoted to protests against all imaginable societal ills using music as his medium, so also Adeolu Akinsanya, Alias Baba eto. Late Chinua Achebe, in 1979 had submitted that “Any African artist that tries to avoid the contemporary African problems ends up being irrelevant. “… He must be aware of the faintest nuances of injustice in human relations. The African writer (Artist) cannot therefore be unaware or indifferent to the monumental injustice which his people suffer.”