Corporate Windmills

I feel that, like art, the writing of McLuhan is intentionally vague so it can be interpreted in countless ways. This is reflected by the variety of responses our class has posted about the matter. I, personally, read the idea that art acts as an “early alarm system” for discovering social and psychic targets as a comment on the ability for artists to raise questions and foresight, to a wide-ranging audience, into the world we live in. I believe that the prophetic qualities that tend to be most frequently found in artists are not limited, by any means, to the arts. But, instead, it is that art allows for open thinking and limitless expression of any views and beliefs about society, culture, the systems of modern and past ages… Much of our society degrades and alienates progressive thinking when it comes to applying it in any sort of political, corporate, or otherwise ‘risky’ adventures (by trying to change or predict the change of a nation by making a speech to the public or starting a campaign), but in art there is the freedom of sending similar messages without direct conflict with people of opposing views. That is, an artist can depict their vision of how the world is, or how it is going to be, in a way that will get people thinking about the subject without feeling overwhelmed or fearful that the progressive discussion will affect their own daily life. I guess what I’m trying to get at, is that the artist is in fact able to act as an “alarm system” to discuss future possibilities for our world, but that this ability is shared by any person willing to take the risk of putting controversial ideas out there.

To see the functions of art in prediction or progression of society, one can pull from endless examples throughout the ages. Looking at the early paintings in European culture, as we did in class, one can see how changes in art closely reflect changes of perception and focus in religion and politics. Before the concept of looking deeper into the distance to apply a ‘vanishing point’, paintings were structured to focus on the main figure as all-important, overpowering, and obviously superior to all other people in the picture (as seen in the images of Madonna). At that time, people were obsessed with hailing religious characters and were suppressed to believe that anything considered ‘holy’ was unquestionably righteous. Later, with the idea of perspective and realistic proportions in paintings, we see a shift in the way people viewed religion and how they treated other methods of thinking in science, history, and the importance of the individual. Before the Renaissance, the people were trained to focus on what was the intended focus of the top branch of hierarchy. With the new way of structuring paintings, and thinking in general, the audience was given the entire picture in proportions that suggested a focus but allowed interpretation. This new style prompted people to think outside of the box and consider different ways to analyze the image- which led to new ways of thinking about the world as they knew it (especially with science and mathematics).