Defining Education

Essay by lizmeyer17College, UndergraduateA+, November 2014

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Liz Meyer

Discover Chicago

The Demystification of Art

10/2/14

Artists' Service in the Community

The Demystification of Art portrays different instances where an artist or their murals has benefitted a community. In all of these examples the artist has served the community by addressing aspects of collective life, making art play a role in social struggles and societal changes. The author describes that artists greatly in the community well, and I agree with him in the sense that artists can change local opinions, help bring cultural issues to the surface and promote interaction in a public space. This can be seen from the experience of painting the first mural in Logan Square, in Westtown's Unidos para Triunfar, and in murals all around the country.

To explain, it is clearly seen through the experience of painting the first mural in Logan Square that an artist can serve a community by changing the way they think about art and artists.

As told by Caryl Yasko in The Demystification of Art,

"[In Logan Square at the time] To the public, anyone who could submit to such hard labor [painting a mural] must either be crazy or getting grand union wages."[1: "The Demystification of Art" p.g. 90.]

This shows that the community only thought that an artist was getting paid huge amounts of money to paint some picture on a wall, or that he was just plain wild. They obviously did not think highly of art during the beginning process of the mural. As time went on, the community warmed up to the artist and the mural because they were amazed at the changes that took place form week to week. They could see the artist's vision coming together. Eventually, citizens were bringing or buying the artist lunch and changing their discourse about art.