What is the “art effect” Joselit refers to? How does art effect you?
Joselit refers to how the globalization of anything can be done through art. He then gives the example of Sheikha Al-Massaya and how there are two forms of power that art effects financially and culturally beyond prior assumptions. When I look at art I learn something new from it, or it completely changes a preconception of mine.I think that art also effects history or the way an individual perceives history. For instance, art can be used as a legitimate source of documentation/evidence of an event, like Clement Saitous’ Sagren exhibit.
Define soft power. What kind of soft power does art possess?
Soft power is defined as, “a discrete work’s form, content, and socio-historical context that is responsible for generating its meanings as well as its political effects.” Art possesses this form of power in the way it impacts/alters an individual’s experience of a common topic. When a piece of artwork excludes itself to only one individual’s experience, it withheld from this soft power. By generalizing the ideology of art, it introduces a stronger “association with creativity, freedom, and open debate.”
What is meant by “civil imagination”?
Civil imagination is the awareness and understanding that art/images can be used to immortalize a “particular social encounter,” and that it is more than the literal moment it is depicting. There are three qualities that assert the civil imagination of art into the expansion of society. Firstly, art possesses “a strong sense of history” in both general art traditions as well as cultural and national traditions. The accumulation of art, like museums and private collections, is another quality of this assertion because it’s associated with various versions of wealth/prestige as well as with another “spirit world.” The third trait that falls under this civil imagination of art is its ability to communicate some form of objectivity that complicates a general idea or de-/re-materializing art in various forms.
This could be a sense or a nonsense: ask a question or include an idea that you find interesting
I found this excerpt rather interesting, “Because of art’s close association with cultural heritage (an association that neither media networks nor popular culture can assert with the same authority), it possesses a powerful effect of localization within a global world.” This idea that art can be used to identify a specific region’s heritage, like Arab modernity, a Brazilian modernity, or an American modernity, has led to the rapid expansion of museums across the globe. The progression of art into a form of economic and cultural growth really upholds the legitimacy of art.
