‘Art Might Not Have The Privilege Of Being Art For Art’s Sake Anymore. It Has To Be Art For Justice’s Sake.”

Wesley Morris is sympathetic to the impulse, but the result troubles him: “Suddenly … the kinds of people who used to be subject to censorship are now the purveyors of a not-dissimilar silencing. … Members of the old anti-censorship brigades now feel they have to censor themselves. So we wind up with safer art and discourse that provokes and disturbs and shocks less. It gives us culture whose artistic value has been replaced by moral judgment and leaves us with monocriticism. This might indeed be a kind of social justice. But it also robs us of what is messy and tense and chaotic and extrajudicial about art. It validates life while making work and conversations about that work kind of dull.”

Article source here:Arts Journal