KaleidoscopeArt Behind Closed Doors :: Free Essays Online

KaleidoscopeArt Behind Closed Doors Before you begin reading this paper, sort through the appendix. Are you shocked? Disgusted? Intrigued? Viewers of such controversial nontextual matterwork often experience a wide spectrum of reactions ranging from the petrified to the pleased. Questions may come on within the mantrap regarding the artistic merit and legitimacy of this unorthodox artwork. However, arts direct purpose, according to Maya Angelou, is to serve humanity. Art that does not increase our understanding of this special(a) journey or our ability to withstand this particular journey, which is manners, is an exercise in futile indulgence (Buchwalter 27). To go on Angelous analogy, because everyone experiences a different life journey, art is different to everyone. In other words, art is subjective to the viewer. The viewer creates his own explanation of what is art and what is not art. Some may recognize the artistic value of a piece of artwork, w hile others may dominate it obscene. Some may praise the artwork, while others will protest it. censorship is derived from these differing perspectives on artwork. Through censorship, communities seek to establish boundaries and criteria that limit an artists ability to resurrect proper artwork. However, some artists choose to ignore these boundaries in order to expand the scope of art and, in their view, better serve humanity. At first of all glance, Western society appears to have changed significantly since the nineteenth-century. Today, industrialized nations enjoy to a greater extent efficient transportation, communication, medical care, and manufacturing than they did in the nineteenth-century. But have our core value changed? While the Western world has changed considerably, peoples opinions of the core values and morality is well-preserved since the nineteenth-century. This assertion becomes apparent when one compares the standards by which Western society settle what is considered artwork. While todays definition and criteria of censorship in a Western art museum is unchanged since the nineteenth-century, the act of censorship has changed with museums and their role in society. Societies often effort to define censorship. Interestingly, the nineteenth-century did not explicitly define the word censorship as Westerners understand it today. The nineteenth-centurys definition of censorship is the office of a censor and the definition of censor is an officer of Rome who had the power of correcting manners (Johnson 112).