Olaf Breuning , Collage Family

                                                    Olaf Breuning , Primitives

                                   Olaf Breuning, Easter Bunnies

While reading Art is Nature by George Gessert one of the first things that came to my head was a quote I had recently read by artist Olaf Breuning. It said , "..I was never someone who believed that culture and art could save human beings. The only thing I think it can do is make human beings sharper in seeing things in a different approach. Thats the beauty of art for me." It's a quote from a recent issue of Tokion Magazine. This issue, of art serving as an activist is something that has been circuling my mind recently. I have a class called art and activism which is dealing with the same issues as in Human Nature Image, however there is a studio discussion in the activism course in which the idea of art as a medium to create change is being questioned. Can art really present itself as a strong enough assertion to promote action?

Wether art can make a definite change in any one issue I think is questionable, however it is a participation in the dialogue that visual communication supplies which I think is crucial to approaching certain issues in society. Perhaps it's because I'm in the arts, but I believe in a sense with seeing is believeing.


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