Capitalism vs. Art :: Sociology Sociological Essays

Capitalism vs. ArtWorks Cited Missing When an unpopular Irish playwright for the British stage said that art imitates support, no one truly cared. Farquhar, a failed-actor-turned writer/director didnt really begin writing his most famous works until he was close to death, but most of his quotable notions and add-in were recorded early in his life. He said this particular phrase after he killed a friend of his, and fellow actor by bully him with a rapier on the stage after mistaking it for a blunt foil. The late 19th century applies to Farquars school of thought because it marks the commencement of a three-stage approach to a comparison surrounded by capitalism and art. Frederic Jameson describes these stages as realism, modernism, and postmodernism . Each of these three stages is associated with the specific type of capitalism that was popular at that eon realism is associated with market capitalism, modernism with monopoly capitalism, and postmodernism with consumer capitali sm. Cornel West, like Jameson, identifies further similarities between capitalist fecal matters and artistic movements in the past century on two levels. On the broader spectrum, West says that civil crisis leads to social change , and that recent social crisis has been the undulating economy. On a narrower spectrum, he discusses the existential challenge to the New Politics of Difference, that is, how does one begin the resources to survive as a critic or artist? (West 617). There is, perhaps, an alternate view that can be considered when approaching a comparison between capitalism and art. Since 1880, a strict equation between economic movement and social change could be formulated, but it does not necessarily hold rightful(a) for the late 20th century and postmodernism. Postmodernism was affected by economic crisis, but because the United States has not faced economic crisis in two decades, the postmodern movement has suffered greatly. Two of the first realist writers were Hon ore de Balzac and George Eliot. Balzacs Le Comedie Humaine (1830) contains none of the baser instincts of man that are glorified in romanticism, (Alter 201). In this 20-year compilation work, Balzac covered many topics, but according to Robert Alter, chairwoman of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (1997), the most important one is that of social and economic ambition. Eliots Middlemarch (1871) viewed human life grimly, with close attention to the squalor and penury of rural life (Alter 8). Alter says that she is one of the first writers whose work was entirely saturated with pessimism.