Artistic freedom is often treated as a modern ideal, but history tells a more complicated story. From religious patronage to online outrage, the boundaries of art have always been shaped by power. Speaking at a recent event hosted by the campaign group Freedom in the Arts, singer-songwriter Róisín Murphy said:

The creative soul of this country and indeed of Europe has always thrived on discomfort, on the freedom to be wrong, to offend, to pivot and to surprise ourselves. Without that freedom, we don’t get better art, we simply put artists into a chokehold and suffocate the life out of our culture. We need free inquiry and open debate. The arts must breathe freely again.

The creative soul of this country and indeed of Europe has always thrived on discomfort, on the freedom to be wrong, to offend, to pivot and to surprise ourselves. Without that freedom, we don’t get better art, we simply put artists into a chokehold and suffocate the life out of our culture. We need free inquiry and open debate. The arts must breathe freely again.

I am deeply sympathetic to her position, particularly as an artist who has experienced public backlash myself. Yet I see no evidence that the freedom she describes has ever been a stable or universal condition. Artists have always existed in tension with prevailing powers; political, religious, economic and cultural. Those powers shift, but never disappear.

Artistic freedom requires not only legal protection but also cultural willingness

Artistic freedom requires not only legal protection but also cultural willingness

Art is, by nature, subjective. The frameworks through which it is evaluated are shaped by the politics, values and sensitivities of their time. In his book How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz notes that he was nearly pushed out of the art world for praising the work of George W. Bush. In that small anecdote, something larger becomes visible: the existence of informal boundaries around what........

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