Art and Power in History

Abstract

Public power establishes, in a more or less transitory or sustained manner, the objective conditions for the development of art. Specifically, power allows the emergence of a type of specialization that drives the dynamic development of “professional” art, as a trade, to which the artist can dedicate, it ensures the conditions for financing, obtaining raw materials and importing innovations. In this way it allows art to evolve. Even though official art can be very conservative, it has the inclination or inertia to preserve. Let us talk then about the art that, since the down of history, is made at the request of power and for its own purposes, most art, because most of the artistic phenomena of our civilization originate from the demand of power: political, ecclesiastic o economic.