Aside from offering a lovely sight to the audience, art has other more important roles in our world. By staring at a work of our, we are given insights on the artist’s certain view of a societal issue, or even in the artist’s way of life. It is up to the audience on how the artwork is to be interpreted, but the important thing is that the artwork has imparted a message that the artist aims to bring forth.

Now, problems arise when certain individuals feel like an artwork gives an offensive vibe. For example, there are paintings depicting a dark past of the Roman Catholic Church, and many conservatives believe that these kind of things should not be portrayed in any artworks anymore because they are making the devouts question their faith. There are many other issues that artworks contain, making other groups of people feel uncomfortable, so the latter do what they can to censor these artworks. Now this begs the question: should be allow the censorship of art?

Our Freedom Of Expression Interlocks With Our Freedom To Create Our Own Art

Followers of the art believe that it is not an artwork’s responsibility if someone feels uncomfortable with it. In fact, if there is one important job that art has, it is to shake things up and make the audience contemplate about their ways. This is how we know that an artwork has made an impact, when it stirred controversy and make people talk about it. From the conversations sparked by the artwork, the artist has succeeded into getting the people to have deeper realizations about important issues, like gender equality, racism, and social injustices, among others. Truly, art can help us in many ways, aside from improving our own selves.

When we try to censor an artwork, we are silencing the artist that only wanted to express himself through his art. One might argue that art censorship is equivalent to depriving a person of his freedom of expression. Come to think of it, there are many people offering their hot takes online through their written posts, with some causing quite a debacle, but no one’s talking about censoring their posts. The same goes with artworks. If there is an artwork that promotes pomskies, only the bored and sad ones would think about censoring it.