Split Image?

In Act three scenes one and two, we see Hamlet's attempt at revealing the King's crime. Doing this thru a play. Hamlet believes that the purpose of a play is to show truth and to imitate real life happenings. Because he believes this, he stresses it like crazy to the players. Wanting them to be as natural as possible, not over acting or under-acting.

This is where the question comes in: is all art supposed to be a mirror image of society? At first I, right away, thought that it wasn't. Mainly because of all the obscene and out of this world stuff that we see. I thought that there was no way that that reflects society at all. But then as I thought about it, I think that all artists have to have some influence to their art. It may or may not be shown just straight up, but it theories, and techniques, etc. There may be a painting, that most people wouldn't think too much about. But it may have little signs of darkness in it, and you may find out that it was painted during the Great Depression. So going back to the question with out babbling on with attempts to illustrate my point, it seems like there is almost always some influence or some truth in much of the art that we see. . .