Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Radical Art Is an Act of Uncompromising Passionate Resistance

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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