There are no visual limits. Art is what it is. It’s whatever it wants to be, and is only limited by the artists’ imagination.

This is especially true as we constantly redefine just what art is.

To suggest that artists have some sort of outside ‘rules’ that they adhere to while making a piece of art is not only unlikely, but ridiculous. Artists in general make art based on what they want to say, and if someone tells them that they aren’t allowed to do something, they are usually inclined to tell that person to go to hell.
Artists can’t even seem to agree on what a definition of art is, 1 much less the rules for keeping it a certain way. This definition goes into line and form, by is repudiated by Paul Vogt.

..In the face of the tremendous processes that have emerged and the complexity of the external forms they have assumed, one might question whether… an approach dictated by the traditional concept of a linear development can still be adequately elucidated…2 

Art has been used both to promote and protest ideas (usually in government or religion) for a long time now, and the first amendment has made it flourish here in the United States, but that hasn’t stopped it in other areas. Consider, for instance, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose art has been described as ‘overtly political’ 3. (read protest art against the regime of China) He’s been detained for his art on multiple occasions, but he still keeps at it because it’s his passion- and tied with his passion for his country and the people in it. Challenging the establishment seems to be a running theme with artists. I don’t know if this is due to the personalities of the type of people that are attracted to the idea of becoming artists, or if it’s just part of the culture of art that rubs off onto the artists that join. Probably a little of both. You take like minded people and put them in the culture, and like a culture in a lab, the little ideas of each individual grows, feeding of one another.

Artists, as the highly individual people that they are, have a tendency to trash any boundaries or limits that are set before them. Artists are a big ‘screw you’ to anyone that tells them that they can’t do anything. It’s almost as if boundaries are looked for so that they can be broken, although it seems to be more about being unable to ignore an affront to freedom and personal expression. 

It seems as if this notion of freedom is being spread like wildfire around the world right now, with the the most prominent example being Libya. Granted, there are also people that are lined up to try to take control and exert their own brand of lack of freedom on the people of the these countries, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood, but it seems that the average person is just sick of the social controls that are going on in the middle east.

Hosni Mubarak was a brutal dictator. So is Ghadafi, only with a Kim Jong Il type craziness to boot. The media from all over the planet has been watching these countries (also included are Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) with baited breath, and for the most part has decided on who the good guys and bad guys are. There’s really very little disagreement on who should be backed in these conflicts; most of the disagreements stem from what should be done exactly. In our country we have two other wars going on already, and Obama is concerned with how the rest of the world sees him, and by extension, the United States.
The media (when the media is mentioned, I’m pretty much referring to all media that isn’t Fox News, unless otherwise specified) will support their cause- Chomsky is correct. The cause isn’t necessarily one of war, though. Following the invasion of Iraq, the news was littered with anti Iraq war stories, especially on NPR. Stories about the collateral damage, and questions about if we should even be there. Stories about people like Cindy Sheehan protesting the President at his ranch. The fringes of the media such Michael Moore in his movie Fahrenheit 911even went so far as to question the 9/11 bombing of the world trade towers by suggesting they were actually planted by the President himself to boost his popularity ratings! Gas prices were going through the roof (especially after 2006) and there were stories about it constantly. Iraq was said to be a war for oil. People did stories from gas pumps, and it was all George Bush’s fault. The movement to destroy George W. Bush was on.

This movement spilled over into the art world as well. In music you had bands such as Ministry with their song "No W" and Rage Against the Machines ceaseless rantings everywhere. In the visual art world There are almost too many paintings to mention. Just in colleges I personally saw several anti Bush paintings- usually portraying him as a power hungry mad man or greedy money grubber. I don’t have pictures due to these being student paintings, but they were there and portrayed the basic mood of the populace at the time as defined by the popular media.

We are currently still in the Middle East. The media usually dismisses any protesting that might happen against president Obama. The gas prices are through the roof again. It took a very long time for the media to say anything about it at all. Now that they are talking about it, our president is never held to account. Never mind that along with the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative easing program, all the money our Federal government has put into the system has decreased the value of the dollar, making it more expensive to buy everything. (this isn’t the only cause, but one of many- the unrest in the middle east being a major factor as well.)

Why talk about these things? Because that’s the power of the media to shape public thought. The media drives public opinion. When Walter Cronkite expressed doubts about the Vietnam War on February 27, 1968, the big turn against the war started. Then president Lyndon Johnson was quoted as saying “That’s it. If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”4.
This isn’t to say that everyone’s opinions are based solely on the News or popular television programs and movies, but they do affect how a large portion of the populace thinks, as well as what they think. The artists either go with or go against this, and sometimes it’s the same thing.

After 9/11 happened, it seemed that all of the news outlets, including Fox, were united. The House, Senate, and President were also united. The people of the country were united. There were exceptions, of course- but for the most part everyone was united in their patriotism. Little flags were on every cars antenna and full sized flags wouldn’t stay on the shelves at the stores. While this was great, it didn’t last. Eventually the country divided again, and now it seems more divided than ever. It seems as if there’s another war going on through the media- an uncivil war of words. Nobody sits down and calmly discusses the issues anymore, but rather, they ridicule by saying things like “Well, that’s the problem, you tried to use logic with a conservative.” and talk over anybody trying to make a point that differs with their own. It seems especially true in the Media, with people like Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow or Chris Matthews leading the way.

But this doesn’t mean everyone. Just as all people are individuals, no matter which side of the spectrum they line up with, there are movements from all points of view no matter what the prevailing winds happen to be at the current time.
Rothko and Pollock’s work was considered the fixed way that art ‘should be’ according the the writings of Clement Greenberg. There have been several movements since then. The anti conservative, anti founding fathers thought process has a counter protest movement of new, patriotic art.

There are two artists in particular that fill this idea. One is Steve Penley, with a litany of portraits of the founding fathers, including George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, among others. He also does more recent political figures, such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. The whole point is to inspire, as he finds that the ‘fix’ in the art world to be unacceptable.
A small minority of intellectual elitist are attempting to force a sometimes unwilling public to accept it’s hopeless and demented world view as the norm. Many today who want to be accepted by this clique only consider artwork which is cynical and negative to be important. 5

Another artist that has taken this approach is conservative talk show radio host Glenn Beck, whose series of paintings Faith, Hope, and Charity were featured prominently on his hugely popular television show in 2010. The paintings were done in the style of the famous Hope painting of Barack Obama by Shepard Fairey in his campaign for president in 2007. They feature founding fathers Samuel Adams, George Washington and Ben Franklin, respectively. These paintings have been dismissed and ridiculed by the art community and the media at large, and a large portion of the populace is pretty much unaware of them, for the most part. John Haber believes that the conservatives are trying to fix art in a post 9/11 world, though.

On the right, the rhetoric of McCarthyism has translated effortlessly into a world without even a Red menace: a powerful enemy still lurks and still determines every response. 6  He doesn’t seem to get that he’s the McCarthy here- trying to find enemies of humanity is the vast evil conservative effort to crush the average man. By saying that that conservative art isn’t worth anything, he’s the one that is tr ying to take away freedom.

There are, however, people that yearn for these pieces of art. These aren’t propaganda pieces sponsored by the state like the soviet paintings or Nazi posters, but art made by citizens that simply wanted to make them for their own purposes. Art is moving the debate of how the country and the world should be within its own existence, and it will continue forever, at least as long as there are human beings, anyway. People are all different, and disagree on many things. Edward F Rothchild said "The work of art is regarded as the locus of various cultural factors".7

There are so many factors contributing to a persons worldview that it’s pretty much impossible for all people to be exactly alike. Here are some examples.
1. Where were you born? Someone born in Wichita has different experiences than someone from rural Namibia or Islamabad, Pakistan.
2. When were you born? There are periods in history were ideas like slavery and human sacrifice being all right are perfectly acceptable.
3. How were you raised? The circumstances in which you were raised make a big difference in how you see the qorld as well, as the people who raised you put certain influences into your life. The influences of someone raised Orthodox Jewish are different that someone raised in an Atheist household, or someone raised in an orphanage in the Ukraine.
4. The individual personalities of humans. Some people go along with the crowd. Some reject everything they were taught. Some are a combination of the two that sit down and think it out.

Combine the first three variables with the last one and you end up with a vast difference in people, making a vast difference worldviews. This is why communism simply won’t work. Some people are greedy, some are lazy, some have aspirations for their futures. All of these things get in the way of living for the collective.
In variable number 2, when a person lives is considered. This, combined with number 4 means that art and design will always change based on how long it’s been around. The whole concept of retro, with a nostalgia for the 50s 60s or 1600s will always be around.

In the eighties, the concept of disco making a comeback was totally unthinkable, yet it did after a period of about fifteen years. Current design trends are in a retro motion as well, with the ultra simplicity of the modern era taking hold. These have a lot to do with ‘when’. If you’re bombarded by a certain style of art, design, or music, it can get boring. When the next latest greatest thing comes out and all of the media changes to its style, and another after that, experiencing the older style can seem refreshing, simply because it’d been awhile since you saw or heard it. This insures that there will always be change of some sort.

Here’s the apparent paradox. People as a whole don’t change. There are some basic personality types, but humanity doesn’t evolve into different personalities over time. If someone from Wichita were born in one of the other areas instead, with the same base personality he or she has here, they could turn out to be a vastly different person. And if in a crisis that caused society to revert to a more primitive time, who’s to say that people wouldn’t revert as well? The notion that people have somehow evolved ‘beyond’ is nonsense. People react to their environment. Change the environment and the person will change as well.
Both of these apparent contradictions come to the same conclusion, though. Society is always changing, with new people and and both new and the reintroduction of old ideas. Because of this, art will always change, being constantly in flux. There are no rules, there is no fixed style.

1. http://arthistory.about.com/cs/reference/f/what_is_art.htm What is Art? Shelley Esaak
2. Contemporary painting ND 195.V5713 Harry N Abrams Inc. Publisher
3. http://www.npr.org/2011/04/04/135106133/dissident-artist-missing-amid-crackdown-in-china
4. http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/change-viet2.html
5. http://www.penleyartco.com/pages/about
6. http://www.haberarts.com/ascocks.htm
7. Studies in the Meaning of Art ND 195.S82 Published 1934 University of Chicago