Art as a possibility of mediation in social work

Abstract

The concern in understanding art and its relation to social life is not something new in modern society: one can find its roots in the nineteenth century. The perception that art and artistic expressions carry in them a "reflection" of society is a fact of tension among the scholars and philosophers, but its explanation as a reflection is the basis of Estética, from Lukács. One of the author's fundamental thesis is that all forms of reflection analyzed in the total of the routine life - be it science, or art - reproduce the same objective reality, but it is necessary to break with the notion of reflection as something mechanical, such as a photographic reproduction. The science and the art are exemplifications of the human capacity to reflect society. For a society that is increasingly characterized as a stimulant for an exacerbated individualism, from the isolation and disassociation of everything, of the community, the art appears as one of the means which potentates the whole human being and the Social Work has to understand it as a possibility of mediation.