Recently, I’ve come across the work of Sister Mary Corita a nun from California and pop artist during the 1960’s and 70’s. This quote of her’s stuck me when considering the role of the artist in culture:
“If we seperate ourselves from the great arts of our time, we cannot be leaven enriching our society from within. We may well be peripheral to our society – unaware of its pains and joys, unable to communicate with it, to benefit from it or to help it. We will be refusing to care about the fight to free man that James Baldwin speaks of: ‘The war of an artist with his society is a lover’s war. And he does at his best, what lovers do, which is reveal the beloved to himself, and with that revelation, make freedom real.’”