Capitalism vs. Art :: Sociology Sociological Essays

Capitalism vs. ArtWorks Cited Missing When an unpopular Irish playwright for the British stage said that art imitates intent, no wiz really cared. Farquhar, a failed-actor-turned writer/director didnt really catch writing his most famous works until he was close to death, only most of his quotable notions and wit were recorded early in his life. He said this particular phrase after he killed a adorer of his, and fellow actor by stabbing him with a rapier on the stage after mistaking it for a blunt foil. The late nineteenth century applies to Farquars school of thought because it marks the beginning of a troika-stage entree to a comparison mingled with capitalism and art. Frederic Jameson describes these stages as pragmatism, modernism, and postmodernism . Each of these three stages is associated with the specific type of capitalism that was popular at that time realism is associated with market capitalism, modernism with monopoly capitalism, and postmodernism with consumer capitalism. Cornel West, like Jameson, identifies further similarities between capitalistic movements and artisanic 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 acquire 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 true for the late 20th century and postmodernism. Postmodernism was modify 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, ( turn 201). In this 20-year compiling work, Balzac covered many topics, but according to Robert Alter, president 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.