KaleidoscopeArt Behind Closed Doors :: Free Essays Online

KaleidoscopeArt Behind Closed Doors Before you begin reading this paper, cypher through the appendix. Are you shocked? Disgusted? Intrigued? Viewers of such disputable trickwork often experience a wide spectrum of reactions ranging from the petrified to the pleased. Questions may devise within the beauty regarding the artistic merit and legitimacy of this unorthodox artwork. However, arts primitive purpose, according to Maya Angelou, is to serve humanity. Art that does not increase our understanding of this occurrence journey or our ability to withstand this particular journey, which is feel, is an exercise in futile indulgence (Buchwalter 27). To lose ones temper 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 commentary of what is art and what is not art. Some may make do the artistic value of a piece of artwork, whil e others may move up it obscene. Some may praise the artwork, while others will protest it. censoring is derived from these differing perspectives on artwork. Through censorship, communities seek to establish boundaries and criteria that limit an artists ability to introduce 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 kickoff glance, Western society appears to have changed significantly since the nineteenth-century. Today, industrialized nations enjoy more efficient transportation, communication, medical care, and manufacturing than they did in the nineteenth-century. But have our core set 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 decide what is conside red 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 bark 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).