Editorial

Art and society

Julio C. Córdoba Upegui

How to cite this article in APA: Córdoba Upegui, J. C. (2022). Art and society [Editorial]. Poiésis, (43), 12-13.

https://doi.org/10.21501/16920945.4515

It is already a long-standing custom that when any of the prototypes of societies go into a tailspin, or at least “stink”, to “recompose a little” the structural maladjustments, some minor shake-up of the multiple political “amendments” facilitates a new breath to the anachronistic. But art in general does not succumb to flattery and handouts, it maintains its critical position, on high, discoverer and sharper than the “Ocam’s razor”.

The current society, contemporary format of the free exchange capitalism, where competition prevailed, supported by the criterion of backing all fine, durable and accessible to the buying majorities, is no longer functional.

After centuries of relentless processes of refurbishment, that precious and harmonious logic of the free-thinkers who gave the final blow to the opprobrious feudal regime to found the manufacturing capitalism, loaded with free men and women, willing to “sell” their work capacity to enhance their lives with dignity, hand in hand with science and art, eager to serve the very new regime of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity; they saw how their contributions to the new regime that offered substantial modifications to their lives, in little more than a hundred years, began to decline. The cracks pointed out by the critical thinkers were expressed with greater clarity, showing that history was already beginning to show the way to the grave, and that its gravediggers were the collectives alienated from everything, even though they were the builders of the great human achievements obtained up to that moment.

Added to this were the voices of the sciences and the arts, which, unrestrained, continued to insist on seeking broad thresholds of development and well-being. The chants of the sciences, through the marvelous inventions that enhanced to the unimaginable the production of all kinds of goods and services within the reach of almost everyone, was the prelude to an old dream that seemed to become a reality.

And at the same time, poets, painters, sculptors, in short, that great pleiad of heroes of the aesthetic -perhaps the most precious good of humanity- did not cease to predict, as far back as seven or eight centuries ago, with Erasmus of Rotterdam, revolutionary Luther, Michelangelo and others, the hecatomb that awaited the landed power. Shakespeare, in his tragedies, insisted on the inescapable fall of the blue-blooded lords, and in their place, liberal thought was rising vertiginously. Cervantes himself illustrates the rickety feudalism in the head of the orate and “illustrious knight” of La Mancha, who raises the alienated condition of the madman who no longer has a place in history but tries to recover it.

We cannot miss the presence of the great French writer Emilio Zolá, with his Germinal, in which he expresses the limitless voracity of the promising capitalist model. It has to be built on the death and misery created for those who enrich it: the workers.

The poets of yesterday, today and always, will apparently be those who maintain the dreams of a human species, fraternal, supportive, gentle and, above all, keeping at the top, the flags of the utopian, which makes us feel proud to be part of the only species on earth that has managed to become aware that “we are stardust” as the genius Carl Sagan pointed out.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest with any commercial institution or association.

Author notes

Julio C. Córdoba Upegui

Especialista en pedagogía para el desarrollo del aprendizaje autónomo de la UNAD, Medellín - Colombia. Contacto: jcordoba266@gmail.com