Totalitarian art must be a form of classicism: the state which is founded on order and subordination demands an art with a similar basis. Romantic painting, however popular, expresses the revolt of the individual. The State also requires an art of reason by which appropriate works may be produced as required. Inspiration is outside state control. The classic attitude toward subject matter - that it should be clear and unequivocal - supports the attitude of unquestioning belief. Add the fact that totalitarian art must be real enough to please the ignorant, ideal enough to commemorate a national hero, and well enough designed to present a memorable image, and one sees how perfectly The Death of Marat fills the bill. That it happens also to be a great work of art makes it dangerously misleading.
Kenneth ClarkRelated topics
add art classicism clear control death enough form great hero ignorant matter memorable national order outside present real reason revolt romantic should state subordination well work works totalitarianRelated quotes
It is customary to define psychiatry as a medical specialty concerned with the study, diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses. This is a worthless and misleading definition. Mental illness is a myth. Psychiatrists are not concerned with mental illnesses and their treatments. In actual practice they deal with personal, social and ethical problems in living.
I have argued that, today, the notion of a person "having a mental illness" is scientifically crippling. It provides professional assent to a popular rationalization - namely that problems in living experienced and expressed in terms of so-called psychiatric symptoms are basically similar to bodily diseases.
Moreover, the concept of mental illness also undermines the principle of personal responsibility, the ground on which all free political institutions rest.
Thomas Szasz
A long decade ago economic growth was the reigning fashion of political economy. It was simultaneously the hottest subject of economic theory and research, a slogan eagerly claimed by politicians of all stripes, and a serious objective of the policies of governments. The climate of opinion has changed dramatically. Disillusioned critics indict both economic science and economic policy for blind obeisance to aggregate material "progress," and for neglect of its costly side effects. Growth, it is charged, distorts national priorities, worsens the distribution of income, and irreparably damages the environment. Paul Erlich speaks for a multitude when he says, "We must acquire a life style which has as its goal maximum freedom and happiness for the individual, not a maximum Gross National Product."
James Tobin
Man derives two capital advantages from the superiority of his intellectual powers. The first is, that, as an individual, he possesses a certain comprehension of mind, whereby he contemplates and enjoys the past and the future, as well as the present. This comprehension is enlarged with the experience of every day; and by this means the happiness of man, as he advances in intellect, is continually less dependent on temporary circumstances and sensations.The next advantage resulting from the same principle, and which is, in many respects, both the cause and effect of the former, is, that the human species itself is capable of a similar and unbounded improvement; whereby mankind in a later age are greatly superior to mankind in a former age, the individuals being taken at the same time of life.
Joseph Priestley
The function [of objective thinking] is to reduce all phenomena which bear witness to the union of subject and world, putting in their place the clear idea of the object as in itself and of the subject as pure consciousness. It therefore severs the links which unite the thing and the embodied subject, leaving only sensible qualities to make up our world (to the exclusion of the modes of appearance which we have described), and preferably visual qualities, because these give the impression of being autonomous, and because they are less directly linked to our body and present us with an object rather than introducing us into an atmosphere. But in reality all things are concretions of a setting, and any explicit perception of a thing survives in virtue of a previous communication with a certain atmosphere.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Many people fail to grasp this point, apparently because they think of "scientific" evidence as only that produced in laboratories by controlled experiments. This leads them to treat field studies, however careful, thorough and well-documented, as "anecdotal"--mere preparation for the real thing, therefore properly ignored till it bears fruit entitled to be considered by learned persons. This attitude was much like that of cavalry generals in the First World War, waiting patiently for the infantry to clear the ground so that they could make the dashing charges that alone they thought entitled the name of warfare. Because these creatures are complex, only a tiny fraction of important truths about them can ever be seen in laboratories of expressed in control experiments. The same, of course, is true of the human race.
Mary Midgley