Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.
-Baldwin
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...unless, I'd imagine, the artist is misanthropic. The artist can be in love with ideals, and grossly disappointed in the society which fails to meet them. Books can be cannonballs, searching for a supporting beam.
Often, the activist-artist is not coming from love but from his own self-aggrandizing ego, who points out fault not for revelation but to be regarded as saintly and to be noticed, with vindictiveness and hate toward those he criticizes. The activist-artist is often a fake.








