Art as Political Activism

In three critical studies of the 1940s Lindsay rejects the notion that an artwork can be neutral. Unity is a key concept that Lindsay uses to understand and value some of the modernist work he has formerly rejected, but also to insist that the artist accepts the responsibility to be not only aesthetically but also socially and politically aware. At the same time, he argues that the artist must be free to make their own judgments not tied to any political or other ideology. For Lindsay the artwork is a form of activism: its form uniting tensions and contradictions that arise in creating a work; its content the artist’s own perspective on their world, which may be as complex and contradictory as the work itself.