Is art a tool for political influence

According to Gustave Courbet, the leading figure in 19th century Realism, the aim of art was to irritate the bourgeoisie, thus art had an active purpose. But who decides what art is? Definition of art changes in time, as well as artistic media. Photography, for example, was invented not as an art, but as scientifical, technical and reference tool, but almost immediately changed in meaning and approach becoming the most powerful tool of social change in society. Invention of photography took centuries, but when it appeared it never stopped progressing and every step on the way was of great significance for social changes.

As R. Gifford mentioned, painters were using photography for reference, like Thomas Eakins, for example, who was an American realist painter, one of the foremost of the 19th century. 'As director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Eakins introduced an innovative curriculum, including thorough study of anatomy and dissection as well as scientific perspective, which revolutionized the teaching of art in America.His insistence on study from the nude scandalized the school's authorities, however, and he was forced to resign in 1886. The Encarta Encyclopedia) being a gifted photographer too, Eaikins was doing photographic studies on the subject (male nudes) only for his personal delectation and not as an art.

Although, according to Susan Sontag, a contemporary American critic and writer, ''photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven we are shown a photograph of it. '' ('On Photography', 1973) When painting and drawings interpret, photographic image justifies; having a photograph is to have a proof that a certain thing really happened.Thus brining Eakins' photographic studies the new level , raising an issue of homosexuality as a social matter. There is no doubt that this subject matter existed long before the invention of photography, but only through photography employed as documentary issue as well as art, the vehicle of social change, literally saying, was filled with fuel.

Talking about photography as vehicle for social change, I'd like to discuss two events which, in my opinion, should be taken in consideration: the carte-de-visite craze along with the stereograph boom, and photographs of Hannah Cullwic "in her dirt".Stereographs were matched pairs of photographs made with a camera having two lenses which when viewed in special viewers, produced starling three dimensional images of the subject. The stereoscope took off in a big way when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert observed one at the exhibition at the Crystal Palace(1851), and Brewster presented her with a stereoscope made by Duboscq. This was the beginning of a huge trade in stereoscopes and images; companies begun to specialize in the mass production and world distribution of stereographs. Thus, an innocent amusement turned into a social event.

The collecting of stereographs became a craze, and until the advent of photography illustrated magazines at the end of the century, this was the most popular public visual entertainment. It's interesting that stereoscopic photo format was never used by photographers as an artistic medium, but with the time we regard them as beautiful pieces of art. In the same time when Claudet patented stereoscopes , 1853, Andre Disderi, a Parisian, introduced the carte-de-visite which were small visiting card portraits made with a special camera that could take several images (usually eight) on one plate.The story how the catre-de-visite became so popular is curious and in some aspect similar to the stereograph's story: Disderi patented his technique of making very small portraits in 1854, but it didn't made a big impression on public until Disderi had an extraordinarily lucky break, when Napoleon III stopped his troops outside his studio and went in to have his photograph taken. Disderi became instantly famous, and people flocked in his studio, making him a very rich man.

Along with this event , the process of producing carte-de-visite was so cheap that it became enormously popular, bringing a new way of communication to the general public, using the cartes-de-visite as "tiny messengers of big ideas", because not only portraits of celebrities, or self-portraits, or pictures of children, or pets were used, but also images representing different aspects of sexual orientation. Are those "messengers" concerned with social issue more "valid" than simple portraits taken just for the pleasure to be represented in a small, but piece of art, providing an aesthetic pleasure?The aesthetics (art, music, drama, and literature) are rational pursuits that add important increments of emotional fuel and pleasures to a person's life, thus aesthetic pleasures are important to the growth of one's psychological and spiritual well-being. Aesthetics reflect a person's most important values in a concrete way, providing powerful emotional fuel to seek ever greater personal growth and achievements. Take as an example Hannah Cullwic, who, referring to Heather Dawkins, " was a working class English woman who kept a diary and had her photographs taken of herself between 1853 and 1874.The archive contains about 60 photographs, most of the photos are of Hannah in her Sunday dresses, but some of them are 'in her dirt', with her sleeves rolled up, and a very few represent her in process of domestic labor. I'm questioning myself: why she did that? What was the reason - keep her diary illustrated, or for an aesthetic pleasure, or to rebel against the society? She was not the photographer, taking auto-portraits of herself, but she negotiated the kinds of representations to be made.

We can consider her as a creator, or may be a sort of an art director for her own photos. Clearly, what we envisage here, is the aspect of art as a tool for social change, which made those photos particularly significant. Hannah's visible muscular arms, soiled clothes, broad hands unveil for us not only the historical representations of that time, but changes in certain social relations of representation. So, thus art as an aesthetical pleasure grows to art influencing social values and even changing not only the perceptions but the world itself.

I have the impression, that we, as public in contemporary society, bombarded, flooded, attacked with communication technologies, such as the television, radio, cinema, and computer networks, which bringing to us art in every possible way, have forgotten that everything is a part of everything, that today begun yesterday, and the contemporary buildboards are a representation of Hannah Cullwic personal act of art, little personal revolution, which is socially responsible for the changes we experience today.Amazing to say that everything , every aspect of contemporary life is influenced, affected or transformed by implication of photography, which was initially invented, however, as a fact-recording medium, then used as an art medium and a powerful and effective tool for social change. Is art that concerned with social issues more "valid" than art which simply provides an aesthetic pleasure?In my opinion, yes, it is. Providing aesthetic pleasure, art is still art, and yet having meanings, being integrated in process of social change, is a vehicle for mankind evolution. If not, we were still sitting around fireplaces, admiring beautiful graffities on the walls of our caves.