The Power of Art

You may ask how can an inanimate object, like art, have power? Art is an expressive language which can be used to break language barriers. Art can also be used as an escape. The artist has the power to pull the viewer from their ordinary world and place them in an imaginary world. 


Much like music, art is universal. A globalizing effect of art is that it can be a source of interaction for people all over the world. While we all may not understand each others languages, we can all understand the purpose of a visual imagery. A British graffiti artist by the name of Banksy is proving to the world that art can have power. Over the years, Banksy has gained a lot of attention and not just in the UK but all over the world for his graffiti that he uses to portray feelings in relation to current world issues. 

We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.

Banksy, Wall and Peace 

 Banksy likes to focus on issues that are affecting large groups of people, two topics of choice are greed and poverty. These two topics directly relate to globalization because that is a problem that many countries are facing in regards to their economical issues. If you look back in history at countries such as Jamaica and Brazil, their citizens faced poverty on a large scale because their country's economy was failing and then the IMF decided to help them. However, when the IMF stepped in,  citizens still could not afford the proper standard of living. Some view capitalism as a means of improving economic stability, however in some cases, it does more harm than good. 

Like globalization, there are positive and negative aspects in art. Artists such as Banksy tend to focus on the negative to create awareness while others tend to focus more on the positive to help whisk the view away from all the problems they are facing, forget about them and relax. When I think about being whisked away, I tend to think of my favorite artist, Monet. 

Water Lillies, Claude Monet (French) 1914-1926
Photo courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art

Monet was an impressionist who can be best recognized for his landscapes. I can remember looking at Monet's Water Lilly's for the first time, sitting on a bench in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and feeling as if I had actually stepped into the Japanese garden at Giverny. Whenever I tend to get a little bogged down, I remember that painting and I let it take me out of my busy world for a few minutes. Art is expressive. Another way it is used to express feelings can be examined through the children that survived Hurricane Katrina. Children use the drawings to help them cope with the disaster and remember what makes them feel safe. Children who were victims in the Pacific tsunamis do the same thing to cope with their feelings. It is amazing to see how art is perceived across the globe and how it provides the same unifying feeling of an escape from the past and present.