Truthout | Op-Ed Sunday, 18 May 2014
By Mark Karlin
Marxian playwright Bertolt Brecht declared of revolutionary art: "Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."
Brecht's work - whose artistic career in Germany (except for his exile
during the Nazi era, after which he returned to found the Berliner
Ensemble Theater company in East Berlin) spanned from the Russian
Revolution to his death in 1966 - illustrated, during his career, that
revolutionary art must avoid the pitfalls of becoming co-opted by
propaganda or commercialization.
Brecht believed that to be a radical and revolutionary artist is to
be defiant of any imposition of form or content by any economic system,
artistic academy or political status quo.
"Mother Courage and Her Children," considered by some as the
theatrical masterpiece of the 20th Century, combines a radical aesthetic
with an anti-fascist theme: The masses suffer from wars fought to
enrich profiteers. But Brecht also kept his distance from the
Soviet-mandated art that glorified Stalin and communism.
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