Jan Bowman is an artist and illustrator.
www.janbow.com

Using art to nudge the public

Today, Voltaire’s Enlightenment optimism has deteriorated into a deep pessimism about humanity and its place in the world.  In Britain, art is no longer seen by the elite as a way of dragging the lower orders up by their bootlaces, but as a sort of Valium to stop us getting any worse.

The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890-1930

It is no accident that the grotesque mode in art and literature tends to be prevalent in societies and eras marked by strife, radical changes or disorientation.
Philip Thomson, The Grotesque, (1972)

Surviving New Labour as an artist

It may be harder to make great art in a society where nervous, mistrustful governments encourage intolerance and self-censorship. But it is certainly still possible to make good art and to do it without special help.