Progressive Buttons Blog

You might think that art would be a politically neutral profession… if you didn’t think about the subject very deeply. Consider the subject, and you’ll realize that art is a profoundly political.

For one thing, art requires a determined vision of the world. Artists are not merely passive channels that record the world as it is. They redefine the world as their minds perceive it, in a non-literal fashion. In that respect, art is a statement about what the world is - and making art is a political act.

Also, artists depend upon freedom of speech and freedom of the press, to be able to create and distribute their art. That makes all thoughtful artists liberals, because it’s liberals who defend constitutional freedom.

It’s these ideas that sit behind the campaign button that you see here: Artists for Obama. If you’re an artist who depends upon freedom to do your work, you need to make a stand against the right wing agenda that seeks to squelch that freedom and reduce artists to mere mimeographs of the party line.