William Morris: art for a just society

This paper discusses William Morris's ideas about art, his involvement with socialism, and his vision of a just society. Morris believed that beauty, or in other words art, is inextricably linked with the cause of social justice. In his numerous lectures and writings Morris tells us what he means by a just society and suggests how to achieve it. Through the useful and beautiful merchandise produced by his company as well as his writings, he shows what such a world might look like. Above all, though, the very life Morris led embodied these ideas about art and society perhaps better than anything else. Indeed, Morris's concerns about the deterioration of our quality of life and the wanton destruction of the environment brought on by the industrial revolution and his vision of a desired just society enlivened with a meaningful role for art such as he showed us in News from Nowhere-seem especially pertinent today in the early 21st century.