The textbook just informed me that, during Franco’s dictatorship, the artists who supported the regime were more self-assured and calm than those who didn’t.
No shit, who could have possibly guessed? I wonder what strange psychological quirk made them that way.
Does the textbook demonstrate how it influenced their works of art? (Except that one group’s art supported Franco and other’s – didn’t.)
Reminded me of Orwell’s:
Above a quite low level, literature is an attempt to influence the viewpoint of one’s contemporaries by recording experience. … He may distort and caricature reality in order to make his meaning clearer, but he cannot misrepresent the scenery of his own mind; he cannot say with any conviction that he likes what he dislikes, or believes what he disbelieves. If he is forced to do so, the only result is that his creative faculties will dry up. Nor can he solve the problem by keeping away from controversial topics. There is no such thing as a genuinely non-political literature, and least of all in an age like our own, when fears, hatreds, and loyalties of a directly political kind are near to the surface of everyone’s consciousness. Even a single taboo can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind, because there is always the danger that any thought which is freely followed up may lead to the forbidden thought.
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/preventlit2.html
Were artists not supportive of regime so affected?
(You once talked about posting about the war and its influence till today, but probably now don’t have enough time. May be, in the future?)
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Pablo Picasso did not support the Franco Regime. He was definitely self-assured, although he did not stay in Spain (which, of course, is the deciding factor here.)
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I suppose critical reading is the most important skill you will teach in this course.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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