Abstract
The paper highlights how some arts may promote social and democratic values while others promote non-democratic tenets. Besides, there are a great number of arts that remain silent or neutral to any social and democratic principles. The literature on the relationship between democracy and art is mostly about the possible contributions of arts to democratic values, ignoring huge number of neutral arts mostly produced in non-democratic societies. Naghshi-khat (Iranian Calligram) is a good example of neutral arts to democracy. Being formal, abstract and decorative, this artistic genre replaces the seemingly valid picture of the governments’ ideology with the lived experience of people through national symbolism and poetic appearance. It enjoys governmental support and good sales in the art market mainly at the expense of remaining ignorant to the oppression imposed by the government. Neutral arts dismiss any figure, content or signifier that can refer to political or social elements, disarming any meta-analysis. Such arts escape to abstraction, poetic, decorative and symbolic appearance to avoid any friction with harsh reality of society including censorship and repression.
I like Carl Andre's statement that “life is the link between art and politics. (Lippard 1984)
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Heidary, M. (2022). Neutral Arts to Democratic Values. The Case of Iranian Naghashi-Khat (Calligram). In: Di Stefano, E., Friberg, C., Ryynänen, M. (eds) Aesthetic Perspectives on Culture, Politics, and Landscape. UNIPA Springer Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77830-9_6
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