What a Novel Idea: the Artist as Public Intellectual, Not Decorator

These two lines put a smile on my face. In all the zaniness about the New Museum we’ve forgotten that artists shouldn’t only strive to decorate the homes of the super rich but lead or mold discussions on important topics that impact our global culture.

While some artists simply reflect society, some are critical of it and open a portal to new ways of thinking about a topic.

This sounds like a must buy catalogue:

The essay puts [Edward] Burtynsky’s work not in the context of art history, but in the context of research on recent environmental scholarship. It indirectly makes a powerful case for including artists among the ranks of our most significant public intellectuals. It aggressively pushes art out of the contemporary art ghetto and places it in the mainstream of discourse on the future of our planet. (MAN)