Sympathy for the art gallery

"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society—in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may."

—

Kennedy

read the great commentary by Andy Sturdevant and then the thoughtful reaction by Mills.

I tend to agree with Kennedy; but will say that political art IS possible when it comes from “the truth within the artist” IE when it is sincere. But you would probably not call it political art but just art.

A more subtle / dangerous political aspect of art is how it is used by politics to establish a “us VS them” mentality, as in the 60s when in the USA abstract expressionism was exemplary of the the freedom in the US enjoyed by artists VS the constrictive practices in the USSR. Or the way “modern art” was used to herald a new age after WWII germany in Kassel with the DOCUMENTA (OK, I think that was largely magnanimous but political nonetheless).

Mostly when art is is political it is DESPITE the artists.