"politics as an art with the people as the palette."-Manuel Azaña, Minister of War, Second Spanish Republic, 1931.
First image Baroque (1600-1730).
First image Rococo (1720-1780).
Industrial Revolution (1760-1820/1840).
We'll pick this up tomorrow with Romanticism (1790-1880). I wish we didn't have to but that's next, unfortunately.
Okay. We've heard politics as art before. "The people as the palette" is new to me. Mao Zedong said that the peasants of China were a "blank slate," one could write anything on them and make anything of them. The metaphorical equivalent of "blank slate" slate would be "canvass" in painting. Politics was painterly art to Azaña, the people were his colors, the artists, it follows, would be the politicians. So,
"Politics is a painting painted by politicians using the people as his palette."
Western painterly art history therefore should pretty closely "mirror" how the reality that the people feel, with the politicians slightly, but not too far, out ahead of the people, using them as their palette, but emphasizing certain colors and deemphasizing others, creating a picture of the near future.
We know that the ocular realism of painting long ago gave way to other painterly realities.
First Google image, "Renaissance (1300-1602) painting."
Very realistic depiction of "The Militia Company of Frans Banning Cocq" by Rembrandt "With Unrealistically Dramatic Lighting Unless Rembrandt Invented the Spotlight." Good painter, Rembrandt.
What the fuck is that shit. "The Shepherdess" by Who Cares. Not realistic. That scene has never appeared anywhere in reality. It is Who Cares' dream. Why the abrupt change with artists painting dreamscapes?
Ah, the dark, Satanic Mills. Yep, would want to escape those. Think "The Shepherdess" would nwant to walk barefoot through the dark, Satanic mills or through Who Cares' pleasant pastures green? Duh.
