António Pinto Ribeiro /// ART AND POWER

Art has little or almost no power, even though we may know of situations in which “a book saved a person”, or in which a film changed someone’s life forever, a song made a politician more melancholy or the fact of going to the opera altered someone’s biography. Even so, art has very little power. Although there are those who state, for example, that “literature can achieve a lot”. It may take us by the hand when we are deeply depressed, lead us to a coming together with other human beings, make us understand the world better and help us to live. This doesn’t mean it is a technique for curing the soul; in any case, what it can do is reveal the world, point out the way and transform each of us from the inside”[1]. Indeed, these situations are well known, but such examples of conversion do not serve to make art itself an instance of absolute power, one that can be predicted with absolute efficiency and guaranteed intervention.