audience and politics in art

8/12/2019 Audience and Politics in Art

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Prepositional Phases: The Political Effects of Art on AudienceAuthor(s): Timothy J. LukesReviewed work(s):Source: International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique, Vol.12, No. 1, The Politics of Art/Art et politique (Jan., 1991), pp. 67-86Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1601422.

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International oliticalScienceReview 1991), Vol. 12, No. 1, 67-86

Prepositional Phases: The Political Effects of Arton AudienceTIMOTHY. LUKES

ABSTRACT.ocial realism, postmodernism, modernism, and romanticismhave allbeen pressed to resist politically the excesses of modern industrial society. Thepurported political fortes of these movements can be arranged and analyzedaround simple prepositions, if not propositions. Social realism is of its audience,highlighting progressive tendencies while disparaging laggards. Postmodernism ischampioned as disruptive of habitual behaviors, and thus is at its audience.Modernism is said to inspire a purer alternative which is abovets audience. Andromanticism goes beyondts audience to levels of unfettered transcendence. Afterjustifying this prepositional taxonomy, this essay exposes the weakness of eachartform's connection with politics, finally speculating on the possibility of a moreuniversal incompatibility of art and politics.

To discuss art and politics is to discuss the audience; and there are, I believe, twobasic ways to do it. The first is to examine the effect of the audience (widelyconstrued) on art, that in the present focus translates to, how do political thingsappear in artworks? Attention to this question pays substantial dividends to one'saccounting of a particular artwork. Some familiarity, for instance, with the attemptof the ruling "nine" to fashion their republic on Aristotelian-Aquinian principles addsmuch to the viewing of Lorenzetti's renditions of fourteenth-century Siena.The effect of audience on art can also enhance one's understanding of politics.Machiavelli, for instance, reserved many insights regarding his "audience" forliterary treatments.1 And contemporary works like Ferenc Temesi's Dust intentionallyblur or even deny the boundaries between fact and fiction in accounts that highlightthe artistic license in historical recitation. The claim is that a superior understandingof historical and political "reality" is the result, since "objective" accounts hideinterpretation behind method.I have little doubt that much of this journal issue will be taken up with the effectof politics (the audience) on art. My intention, however, is to reverse the causalarrow, and examine the effect art has on its audience. I do so with the impressionthat most such examinations have been poor, tainted by advocacy.The maturation of western capitalism seems to have provoked various strategiesfor an aesthetic, cum political, resistance. Four artistic movements (listed in thematic

0192-5121/91/01 0067-20 ? International Political Science Association


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ThePoliticalEffectsof Art onAudiencerather than chronological order') in particular have accrued political relevance:social realism, postmodernism, modernism, and romanticism. So after brief (andhighly instrumental) discussions of each movement, I will turn to what I think arethe most convincing accounts (mostly from non-artists) of the movements' politicalpossibilities. None of the accounts are wholly convincing, so in the final parts of theessay, I discuss my reasons for questioning the various connections between art andaudience.To help differentiatethe four types of relationshipbetween art and its audience, Ihave assigned a simple prepositionto each. These prepositionscan help distinguishthe various positions in a way that may facilitate comparison. For those who see apolitical potential in social realism, art is most effective when it is of its audience.Forpostmodernism(along with dadaism), it is art atthe audiencewhich is preferable.For modernism (along with various forms of classicism), it is art abovehe audience.And for romanticism (and the various neo-romanticmovements) it is art beyondheaudience.Not to forsake obligatory academic rituals, let me admit to overstating andsimplifying aesthetic distinctions. Clearly, an artworkcan be simultaneouslyof andat its audience; and aesthetic interpretationscan depend in part upon time frameand audience perspective. I do think, however, that the four "prepositionalphases"representfourimportantprototypesof contact between art and its audience,and thatan artificialcategorizationlike this can render the discussionof art and politics a bitmore manageable.

Art Of Its AudienceAccording to Walter Benjamin, artists have been wrestling with a non-existentdilemma. Having recognized the ideological component of bourgeoisentertainmentliterature, progressive artists ask how they can inspire the appropriate politicalresponse while at the same time produce works of quality. Behind the dilemma isthe assumption that aesthetic quality and tendentiousnessare opposed.For Benjamin,the imperativeof artistic aloofnessis itself a type of tendentiousness.Artists who submit to the dilemma of "progressive"art are submitting not to thepressure of aesthetic purity, but to the pressure of an outmoded and exploitativeideology that sanctifies autonomy while condoning automation, heroism whilecondoningbanality.3For Benjamin,no art is aloof or disconnected.Art that appearsto be aloof is tightly connected to a power structurewhich uses claims of exclusiveinsight and qualitative transcendenceto prolong in the laboring classes' regressiveand opiating attitudes of autonomy and spirituality.Rather than encourage artists to maintain the facade of detachment, Benjaminshocks them into a recognitionof the unavoidableattachment;and having done that,he can then ask the artist to choose the most honest and progressivemeans to portraythe connection. Aloofness is a highly political posture in an atmosphere wherepolitical and not just aesthetic figures can profit from its mystique.Because Benjamin has a vision of a "better"world, he can specify those aspectsof the audience which are worthy of emphasis. Maublanc "and many of hiscomrades" (Benjamin, 1977: 102) flounderedafter their rejectionof bourgeois art,since they failed to replace the ossified forms with more accurate Marxist ones.Benjaminoffers a rudderfor his meanderingassociates:

Will he succeed in furthering he unificationof the means of intellectual

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TIMOTHYJ. UKESproduction? Does he see ways of organizing the intellectual workers within theiractual production process? Has he suggestions for changing the function of thenovel, of drama, of poetry?The more completely he can address himself to thesetasks, the more correct his thinkingwill be and, necessarily, the higherwill be thetechnical quality of his work (Benjamin, 1977: 102-103).

Here is the political essence of art of the audience, or "social realist" art. Basedon a dialectical (in which case "social" realism can become the more specific"socialist" realism) or some such criterion4 for sifting progress from reaction, realistart hopes to capture and draw out of the audience those traits that the reactionaryforces suppress. The alternative is not visionary or transcendent; rather, it is clearand developed for those who choose to recognize it.The political task of art, then, is to aid in the isolation and clarification (as opposedto invention) of progressive alternatives, along with, of course, disrupting anddemeaning the status quo. Realist art may be a "small cog or small screw" in theproductive machinery, as Lenin would have it, or it may be of the more rarefiedvariety of Lukacs.5 In either case (although Benjamin and Brecht are "purer"archetypes) realist art's political task is to assist, and is dependent upon, broadercharacteristics of its audience.

Epic TheaterBertolt Brecht's epic theater is art of its audience: "Epic theater, he [Brecht] declared,must not develop actions but represent conditions" (Benjamin, 1977: 99). And, forBrecht, those conditions are best reached through a motif of constant interruption:"It obtains its 'conditions' by allowing the actions to be interrupted" (Benjamin,1977: 99). Epic theater shuns linearity, not only in subject matter but in technique.The plays counterpoise snippets, subplots, and diversions. For Brecht, and Benjamin,this smorgasbord approach to art is politically progressive in a number of ways.Without thematic narrative or technique, concepts of specialization and consistency,so dear to capitalist productivity, erode. Especially important here is the music,which interrupts not just the words in the dialogue, but the dialogue form itself. Thediverse socialist individual gains inspiration from the diversity of epic theater. Themontage motif inspires a montage individual:

Let me remind you of the 'songs,'6 whose principal function consists ininterrupting the action. Here, then-that is to say, with the principle ofinterruption-the epic theater adopts a technique which has become familiar toyou in recent years through film and radio, photography and the press. I speakof the technique of montage, for montage interrupts the context into which it isinserted (Benjamin, 1977:99).

In fact, Benjamin connects epic theater to the daily newspaper. A newspaper doesnot "end," and it can be read in various orders and with various levels of attention,all according to the whim of the reader. Without delimiters, a newspaper is notseparate from the lives of its audience; it is part of the process of life. Likewise, anaudience cannot help but see itself in an artistic presentation that employs thenewspaper motif; or more accurately, confronted with such a motif, the audiencefinds it impossible to withdraw itself from the artwork.If there is any linearity to epic theater, it is to be supplied by the audience. Sittingpassively while absorbing a predetermined meaning is not only a trait of bourgeoisart, but it is also an aspect of capitalistic manipulation of human productivity. Art,

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ThePoliticalEffectsof ArtonAudiencelike labor, ought properly to be an aspect of communal interchange. Thus, therelationshipof art and its audience ought to be such that the distinction itself is everdiminishing.

Art At Its AudienceRather than a "small cog or screw" in the revolutionary machinery, some see therole of art as throwing a wrench into the works of modern society. This is art thatshuns complicity, usually because it can see no logic in reality, despite the efforts ofits targetto establish one. Unlike artof its audience,this kind of art is not particularlytakenby any of its audience's traitsor hiddenpotentials. If it has a notion of progressat all, it tends to focus on the salutaryeffects of disruption.Like epic theater and other forms of social realism, art at the audience rejects thedetachment of beauty from reality. Often called "anti-art,"this artformdecries theescape that "beautiful" art can provide. However, instead of "informing" anaudience with courageousaccuracy,art at reality challenges its audience. Art of theaudience values certain traits within the audience, while art at the audience is warythat any audience trait is of unassailable value.In the dadaist period, the pretensions of the bourgeois artform were assaulted(ratherthan counterposed) by nonsense poems the verses of which are chosen froma hat; or by simultaneous poetry, which involves a group of poets all chanting oryelling in different anguagessimultaneously;or by soundpoems, in which the authorattempts to avoid utterances that even approximate words [See (Hunter, 1972)].Marcel Duchamp depicted bourgeoisindividualsas machines in many of his works,dramatizingthe mechanistic natureof what were thoughtto be mattersof "spiritual"autonomy-especially love, sexuality, and creativity.The bachelors,for example, in"The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even," were represented by apaddlewheel,a grinderand an assortment of metallic funnels.More recently, the structuralist (and/or post-structuralist)revolution in philoso-phy has inherited the dadaist perspective. Sloughingoff the claims of aesthetic or anyother type of representational purity, Foucault and his colleagues excavate thecultural myths that are contained in representation, inking representationdirectlyto the power centers of culture. Thus, an important role is given to insights thatunmask images that fit only because they are consistent with a flawed, perhapslimitingwhole. Meaningcannot be retrievedhistoricallysince a historicalperspectiveretains a pleasing evolution of the dominant mode of categorizing ("indexing")experience. Meaning is more deeply understood if it is extracted contextually-shown to be contingent upon a particularmode of categorization.Postmodernistartists, bringingthese structuralistconcerns to art, are particularlydisturbed by three tenacious aspects of modern culture-depth, originality, andpurity. With varyingdegreesof tendentiousness,these artists show how and why thedominant culture maintains these obsolete concepts.For instance, a perceivedhavenof depth could do much to defuse a burgeoningdisgust with rampant superficiality.Likewise, an aesthetic haven of originalitycan quieten those who detect the roboticaspects of modern existence. And, finally, an aesthetic bastion of purity can cleansethe consciencesof modern participantsin iniquity (Sekula, 1978:859).DepthAndy Warhol provides a good example of the postmodernist rejection of depth.Assigning any significance to Warhol's work, much less political significance, runs

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TIMOTHYJ. UKESthe risk of eliciting the same, "uh, gee, great" with which he responds to all suchanalyses (Hughes, 1982: 6). His superficiality is so thorough7that even labelling itas superficialtaints the labeller with status quo pretentiousness.But despite, or ratherbecause of, this total indifference to relevance, Warhol's work has been described aspunctuated with political meaning. For analysts like Rainer Crone, any admissionon Warhol's part of a deeper meaning to his work would grant legitimacy to the falselanguage of depth with which he would have to make such a statement.8The purity of Warhol's criticism is demonstrated precisely in his total aversion tocriticizing, since such criticism would be surrendering to a belief that there aresymbols of communication that can convey a meaning that is outside, or deeper, thanthe normal mode of discourse. Warhol, it is argued, sees modern life as so totallysuperficial that no statement, critical or otherwise, can break through the languageof marketing, mass production, and blind appetitiveness.9 Statements that claim adeeper meaning are only better renditions of the manufactured sincerity of a JerryLewis telethon.Thus, Warhol's magazine Interview asks in the trivial and mundane. It elicitedboth frequentdinner invitations fromcovergirlNancy Reagan and laudatory analysesfrom students of Marx (Gidal, 1971). Warhol's work is the most distilled, innocuous,and refined superficiality; thus, he attracts the ultimate practitioners. Yet becausehe is so selectively and perfectly superficial, he inspires in some a "point where avoid is seen to yawn beneath the discourse of promotion" (Hughes, 1982: 8).

OriginalityAided by the age of mechanical reproduction (and by Benjamin's famous essay onthe topic [Benjamin, 1968]), postmodernism attempts to demonstrate that thesupposedly novel insights of the artist are nothing more than the reproduction ofdominant representationalmatrices that, in the case of the blank canvas, merelyseemto offer a fresh start. The reality for this so-called "grid," however, is that "thecopyright expired sometime in antiquity and for many centuries . . has been in thepublic domain" (Krauss, 1981: 56).Not only that. Even the very first user of the pictorial grid was hardly original;forthe geometry and dimensionality of the grid predispose it to a particular kind ofrepresentation. And the limitations of the grid are matched by the perceptual andhistorical biases of the artist. In fact, claim the postmodernists, the whole dichotomyof original-repetition is a historical construct in which the artist can wallow in a falsevanity and innocence. "The self as origin is safe from contamination by traditionbecause it possesses a kind of originary naivete. Hence Brancusi's dictum, 'When weare no longer children, we are already dead'" (Krauss, 1981: 53). And, of course,one must not forget the advantages of originality to the commoditization of artworks,where the signature of the responsible hand is all important.Representative of the postmodernist rejection of originality is the photography ofSherrie Levine. She often employs "pirated prints" (Krauss, 1981: 64) as subjectsfor her photographs. In one instance, Levine photographed six copyrighted prints ofEdward Weston that depicted various classical poses of Weston's son. Byintentionally and blatantly violating proprietary regulations, Levine questions thelegitimacy of claims of artistic origin. If the Weston prints borrow their balance andpresentation from Phidias and Polygnotus, then Levine has as much claim to theirorigin as Weston. By choosing to reproduce photographs with such a classical link,Levine discloses the tenuousness of originality claims.

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ThePoliticalEffectsof Arton AudiencePurity

The rejectionof purity brings the postmodernistsclose to the social realismof WalterBenjamin. In fact, Benjaminhas been adopted by the postmodernistsas one of theirown. It is only selective perception, however, that allows such an alliance becauseBenjaminand the postmodernistshave very differentreasons foropposingpurity.Asstated earlier, the montage is supported by the realists in order to stimulate therealization of their vision of a complex socialist individual. Purity of artisticpresentationis seen as an ideological prop for specializationof labor.For the postmodernists,purity is opposed not because there is a more progressivereplacement,but only because aesthetic puritydoes not exist, and because those whopractice it are locked into a delusion. Postmodernism attacks its modernistpredecessorsfor claiming to have cleansed and partitionedthe various artforms n away that allows unspoiled revelation to fill the canvas or clay. The postmodernistsargue that there are no such unspoiled revelations.The modernists (led by Clement Greenbergwho will be discussedlater) claim thatproperart cannot be comparedto anythingoutside of the bounds of its medium, thatit is self-contained, and thus pure of outside contamination. The postmodernistsargue that not only is the so-called pure artworkconditioneda prioriby the physicalconfines of the "grid"'u (in the case of painting, for instance), but that the imagestransferred to the grid can never escape the preconditioningof 'humanperceptionand the interferenceof human intent.1 As long as art is producedin a physicalworld,via the intermediation of human perception, there can be no valid escape to a realmof purity.The work of photographer Robert Rauschenberg has been described as a"cataclysmic rupture" (Crimp, 1980:43) of the modern devotion to purity. In oneespecially blatant series of photographs, Rauschenberg appropriatesthe images ofVelazquez's RokebyVenus nd Rubens's Venus t Her Toiletand reproducesthem invarious quadrants of numerous photographs.But going beyond the origin-doubtingstudies of Sherrie Levine, Rauschenberg places the classic images on a field ofseemingly random objects and implements-trucks, helicopters,clouds, birds, keys,statues, water towers and dancers. By integratingwhat were held as pure objects ofart into objects of the "real world," Rauschenbergdraws the art into what was itstrue realm all along. This is the postmodernrecognitionof purity's imaginarystatus.

The Politics of Art At Its AudienceThis kind of art, dadaism and postmodernism,cannot be consideredof its audiencebecause of its intentional distancing. Rather, from its detached position, this kind ofart dismantles (deconstructs?)the given prejudicesand illusions. Nor can this art beconsidered above or beyond the audience, simply because it is almost whollydependent on extant forms for its critical statements. Dada needs the bourgeoisdictionaries and poems to cut up and reassemble,just as the work of Levine andRauschenbergis meaningless without the prior experience of Weston and Rubens.This is why this art is most aptly described as at its audience-highly critical, buthighly, and ironically, dependent and focused.One critic has described the political vision of postmodernismas finding "its truehome in the left wing of the American Democratic Party. Long gone is the dream ofthe unity of radical theory and practice. In its place are the innocuous pieties of therainbow coalition" (Bokina, 1988: 170). Innocuous or not, the politics of art at itsaudience is constricted by its preoccupationwith criticism. Postmodernistpolitics is

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TIMOTHYJ. LUKESunable to construct a "dream of unity" because it does not allow for representationsthat are pure of any self-serving manipulation of communicative signs. Thus, themost that art at the audience can offer is assurance that concepts like depth,originality, and purity are the self-serving facades of a dominant but decliningculture. It thus sets out to destroy those notions, demonstrating that the elite aren'twhat they are cracked up to be.In supporting the destruction of pleasing but insidious illusions, there is animplication that shaking up and expanding the interests of the audience is a goodthing. Feminist art, multi-cultural art, folk art, multi-media art are essential aspectsof the postmodernist movement. Yet there can be no firm justification that theinsights of newer, less pretentious aesthetic practices are more progressive or truethan the forms they replace. Nor is it possible to link the multifarious criticalprotrusions in an ordered constellation, since the rearrangementof the postmodernfurniture does not suggest a satisfaction with any floorplan. The new andquintessentially postmodern Musee d'Orsay, intended to "focus on the relationshipbetween art and politics," managed to arrange its holdings "as a series of startling,dramatic vignettes" (Mainardi, 1987: 31, 360). Thus, those who claim a politicalsignificance to art at its audience tend to support a volatile pluralism.

Art Above Its AudienceThe vulgarity of capitalism, the brutality of Stalinism, and especially the banality offascism propelledyet another perspective regardingthe relationshipbetween art andits audience. Disgusted and disheartened with the extent to which unprecedentedbarbarism was becoming socially integrated, artists and art commentators returnedto art forms that transported audiences above the inhumanity, hoping that thisperspective, labelled "modernism," might jar them from passivity. Adding to thepressure to recondition the artistic venture was the discovery that certain artendeavors themselves had become major contributors to this passivity. Two suchdeformities are "affirmative art" and "kitsch," each providing inspiration toproponents of art above ts audience.

Kitsch and AffirmativeArtKitsch, as described by Clement Greenberg, grows out of the peculiarities ofadvanced capitalism. Since capitalist manufacture demands certain intellectual toolsof its laborers,it creates in its workforcea certain "literacy."Along with this literacy,according to Greenberg,comes a desire on the part of the newly literate to challengeand divert their new skills. Such a desire, however, confronts the constraints thatworkers have no time or money to develop the complex literacy of a leisured class,and that the capitalists are disinclined to encourage such a diversion. Therefore, apopular literacy develops that is simplistic, convenient, and unsubtle, ratified by anelite that fears and discourages anything more than a "working knowledge" ofprinted words and numbers.Kitsch, therefore,quenches the primitive literacy of the masses without unleashingthe more inquisitiveand non-conformistaspects of sophisticatedartistry.In kitsch, thequest for the completely new is exchanged for the cute presentation of "new twists"on old themes (Greenberg, 1939:v. 1, p. 12). The potentially threateningintellectualdevelopment required by capitalist mass production is diverted into an aestheticappreciation that employs formulas and mechanisms that parallel the rigidifiedintelligence needed in the workplace. Sufficient are mere variations on the rage.

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ThePoliticalEffectsof Arton AudienceIf kitschdefusescontemporaryart, it is Theodor Adorno'sconceptof "affirmativeart" that explains the abilityof modernsociety to extract the agitation potentialfrompast forms. ForAdorno,warehousinggreat art and arranging t as if it were a medley

of hit tunes deprives it of the real-worldsufferingand ectasy from which it sprang,and installs art in the realm of dream and diversion. Even the greatest of artworks,then, affirm the present society rather than confront it, because they reinforce theperceptionthat beauty has no place in the mainstream.The music industry, which furtherdegrades this musical supply by galvanizingit into a shrine,merelyconfirmsthe state of consciousnessof the listener,for whomthe harmony of the Viennese classicism-attained through bitter sacrifice-andthe bursting longing of Romanticism have both been placed upon the market ashousehold ornaments (Adorno, 1973:9).

ModernismHow are kitsch and affirmative art to be overcome, then? The solution is recourse tomodernism, and Clement Greenberg is its most famous and articulate defender. ForGreenberg, there is such a paucity of stimulating and edifying references in theeveryday world that good art, although it must necessarily have content, must"detach" (Greenberg, 1939: v. 1, p. 7) itself from considerations of content andconcentrate on form. For Greenberg, the proper status for art in the contemporarysituation is one of purity and limited accessibility. It is art above its audience.Because Greenberg is displeased with the dialectical options revealed in normallife, he establishes art as an alternative source of edification. But in order to provideany kind of alternative, art must purify itself of its material environment. Thus, artis validated only in reference to itself, only in reference to its medium.

It has been in search of the absolute that the avant-gardehas arrived at "abstract"or "nonobjective"art-and poetry, too. The avant-garde poet or artist tries ineffect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms, in theway natureitself is valid, in the way a landscape-not its picture-is aestheticallyvalid; something given, ncreate, independent of meanings, similars or originals(Greenberg, 1939: v. 1, p. 8).

It is no surprise, then, that Greenberg's hero was Jackson Pollock, who was firmlyrooted in cubism-perhaps the purest branch of modernism (or at least Greenberg'smodernism). Like the cubists, Pollock purged painting of the corrupting influencesof exteriority, including other artistic media. Sculptural shading was replaced bypure, unnatural color. Subtle sculptural curves were replaced by prominent, linearbrushstrokes. And geometric shapes, conforming to the dimensionality and shape ofthe grid, replaced natural and literary forms. Greenberg's and Pollock's modernismrepresented a self-contained universe, unwilling to admit extraneous, divertingclutter.

Greenberg often calls this "high" art, just as he warns against the allure of lowerforms. Modernist art cannot be appreciated "without effort" (Greenberg, 1939: v. 1,p. 19). Because it is so tenuously connected to the contented present, it demandsextrication from the easy-chair of mindless consumption. Yet the extrication iscrucial, given the paucity of other sources of stimulation. In fact, Greenberg hangson modernist art the responsibility for energizing a stalled dialectic. Although"retiring from the public altogether," the modernist artist is shouldered with theresponsibility of finding "a path along which it would be possible to keep culture

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TIMOTHYJ. UKESmovingn the midst of ideological confusion and violence." There are obvious politicalimplications here. This is not an ordinary path. It is a higher road, above the "worldof common, extrovertedexperience [which] has been renounced" (Greenberg, 1939:v. 1, pp. 8-9). Shunning politics, this art above its audience portrays a newer, purersystem that is unavailable to the aesthetically ignorant.For more precision on this apolitical politics, we must turn to Theodor Adorno.12For Adorno, the epitome of modernist art is the music of Arnold Schonberg. And ananalysis of Adorno's position on Sch6nberg can be helpful in tracing the politicalramifications of art above its audience.

The Politics of Art Above Its AudienceLike Greenberg, Adorno is disgusted with the "business-as-usual" of his society.Even more aggravating, though, is the proliferationof art that dances and harmonizesaround the depravity. For Adorno, harmony and dance only assist in makingconsistent and unified what is irrational and destructive: "To write poetry afterAuschwitz is barbaric" (Adorno, 1967: 34). Adorno vehemently attacks the music ofIgor Stravinsky, and especially his employment of the dance medium. Adorno is notunreservedlyopposed to the communalism and consonance that dance portrays, buthe believes that unity is hardly a rational position when the unification coagulatesin a society of manufactured desires and needs. There may be times when communalforms are constructive; yet when the communal entity becomes so constricting thatit prevents any autonomous activity, the only art that can be considered constructiveis that which opposes consonance and rejects communality, that which is purifiedand detached.13

So instead of reconciling unresolved societal dissonance by retreatinginto a worldof only musical harmony, Sch6nberg (followed by Adorno) turns to atonality, amusical genre that does not allow any form of premature reconciliation. Indeed, theinsistence on avoiding tonality and consistency precludes arbitrariness, in that itbecomes consistent in inconsistency, consonant in dissonance. The twelve-tone row,invented by Sch6nberg, prohibits the repetitionof any one note until all eleven othershave been played. By avoiding premature "conciliation," Sch6nberg'smusic revealsthe dissonances of the present system, but within an opposing system. Thus thetwelve-tone technique (or the grid of the modernist painter) distinguishes itself fromart of reality by promoting itself as pure and detached from the given. And itdistinguishes itself from art at reality because it opposes the irrationalityof the givenwithin a structured, organized, enlightened alternative. So while art at reality seemsessentially linked to that which it opposes, Sch6nberg's music and modernist artdramatize the vacuity of modern society with the inspiration of an untainted, self-contained alternative structure.

Its [advanced music's] truth appears guaranteed more by its denial of anymeaning in organized society, of which it will have no part-accomplished by itsown organized vacuity-than by any capability of positive meaning within itself(Adorno, 1973: 20).Art, then, in order to be a "catalyst for change" (Adorno, 1973: 25), does twothings. First, it reveals a contradiction (in the case of Sch6nberg, the contradictionbetween bourgeois utility and rationality), and thus breaks down the absolute postureof the contradiction by demonstrating its contingency. Sch6nberg's "organization"(the twelve-tone technique) of the revealed vacuity is his recognition of the possibility

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ThePoliticalEffectsof ArtonAudienceof alternatives, and this is the second political function of art above its audience [see:(Adorno, 1973: 125) and (Greenberg, 1940: v. 1, p. 33)]. Crucial to art above itsaudience, then, is the presentation of a discrete "other," that is felt to beindispensable to any relevant evaluation of the given. It has an indispensable politicalrelevance in the contemporary situation where less radical diversions are renderedharmless.

Art Beyond Its AudienceJacques Barzun has referred to the rise of romanticism in the nineteenth century asthe "Biological Revolution" (Barzun, 1943: 54). According to Barzun, romanticismreflects a concern that Newtonian physics, although responsible for wondrousdiscoveries of universal order, has imposed a heavy toll on the human spirit. Emotionhas been sacrificed to cold reason, and nature itself has been suspended. Thus, thebiological concerns are not so much opposed to the physical, but added to them; theromanticists do not reject reason, but only recognize its insufficiencies. Althoughsome do recommend a return to invigorating chaos, most romanticists invoke a newintegration of reason and emotion, nature and the individual.In his "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," WilliamWordsworth provides an interesting lesson in the main tenets of romanticism. Afterfive years "mid the din of towns and cities," with their "hours of weariness"(Wordsworth, 1969: lines 26-28), Wordsworth returns to the pastoral setting ofTintern Abbey, the peace and beauty of which allow him a

... tranquil restoration:-feelings tooOf unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,As have no slight or trivial influenceOn that best portion of a good man's life(Wordsworth, 1969: lines 131-133)Wordsworth does not use the abbey as a fortress from which to bombard his less

hospitable urban origin. Instead, the natural harmony of the abbey stimulates atranscendent reverie in the possibility of a harmonious connection to externalphenomena-a reverie that would be hampered by any preoccupation with priorarrangements.

While with an eye made quiet by the powerOf harmony, and the deep power of joy,We see into the life of things(Wordsworth, 1969: lines 47-49).

Unlike the art of, at, or above its audience, romantic poetry is not so muchinterested in establishing a relationship with the audience as it is in transcending orgoing beyond t. The restriction on dance after Auschwitz condemned even Adorno'sseemingly detached art to an eternal connection with the serious world. In order toretain its instructional element-its "aboveness"-Adorno's art was restricted interms of appropriate directions. Romantic art, on the other hand, feels no suchobligation to the given, and so it is quite happy to suggest dance or any othertranscendence of the given reality, even a disastrous reality. Art beyond ts audiencemay be connected to reality in terms of its referents and possibilities, but it has nopreconceived intention regarding the nature of that connection.Sadly, however, Wordsworth does not trust his muse. He returns to earth to see

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TIMOTHYJ. UKESthat the human niche in nature ["this unintelligible world" (Wordsworth, 1969:line39)] is hardly serendipitous.'4 The "wreaths of smoke" that issue from the forestcottages are

Sent up, in silence, from among the treesWith some uncertain notice, as might seemOf vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,Or some Hermit's cave, where by his fireThe Hermit sits alone(Wordsworth, 1969: lines 17-21).

This inspires no thought of harmony, but of continuing human solitude anddefensiveness in the face of external nature.Thus, and this has been the cause for ovation and disdain, the romantics mustturn to some kind of faith to support their feeble assertions of harmony.15 HenceWordsworth invests in a "sense sublime" that lurks behind external phenomena, butis hardly supported by them:If thisBe but a vain belief, yet, oh how oft-In darkness and amid the many shapesOf joyless daylight; when the fretful stirUnprofitable, and the fever of the world,Have hung upon the beatings of my heart-How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee(Wordsworth, 1969: lines 49-54).

RomanticPoliticsRightly or wrongly, romanticists have been considered escapists, and thus anypolitical analysis has been tainted by what is seen as a form of cowardice.16 Morerecently, however, Herbert Marcuse radically altered the romanticist reticence in anattempt to lend romanticisma political potency with which it had not been heretoforecredited. 17In his earlier work, Marcuse looks forward to art "allied with the revolution"(Marcuse, 1962: 135). However, as his discussions of aesthetics mature (along withhis disillusionment with revolutionarypolitics) in AnEssayonLiberation,Counterrevolu-tion andRevolt,and The AestheticDimension,Marcuse comes to support the politicalpotential of art that is completely empty of political intent. In the last book he wrote,Marcuse reinvigorates the names of Goethe and William Blake, concluding that"there may be more subversive potential in the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaudthan in the didactic plays of Brecht" (Marcuse, 1978:xiii).For Marcuse, something happens to affirmative,romantic art when it occurs in anenvironment where there is a growing feeling that the dreamed-of harmony withexternal phenomena does not demand a spiritual haven for its protection, but thatsuch harmony could be supported by the given levels of technology and socialdevelopment. ErosandCivilizationells us that the soul and the PerformancePrincipleare most powerfulwhen they repressrevelations that cannot be feasibly implemented.In an argument reminiscent of Eros and Civilization, Marcuse, in The AestheticDimension, ypothesizes that the explosive insights of aesthetic vision can no longerbe arrestedor transformedwithin trivializing compartments, because the belief as tothe infeasibility of the revelations is quickly diminishing. Marcuse remains convinced

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ThePoliticalEffectsof ArtonAudiencethat, in the present age, "history projects the image of a new world of liberation.Advanced capitalism has revealed real possibilities of liberation which surpasstraditionalconcepts" (Marcuse, 1978:27). Thus, Marcuse believes that the pressureof affirmative, romantic art in an environment that finds it harder to cloister itsinterest in harmony (a "pacified existence") will eventually emerge as a politicalforce in the demand for and creation of a liberated environment.The connection of romantic art and politics is complicated, however, by the factthat the "beyondness"of romantic art makes it impossible for the artistic vocationto become instrumental or programmatic, and thus devolve to the ineffective"didacticism"of Brecht.Thus, as soon as Marcuse connectsart and politics,he findsit necessaryto maintain a distinction (Marcuse, 1972: 121-122). He asserts that theartist revolts, not to practice the artistic vocation, but to protect it. In TheAestheticDimension,Marcuse speaks of the "presupposition"of revolution in the liberativeaesthetic activity:The autonomyof art contains the categoricalimperative:"things mustchange".. This does not mean that the revolutionbecomes hematic; n thecontrary,n theaestheticallymostperfectworks,t doesnot.It seems hat ntheseworks henecessity f revolutions presupposed,s the apriori f art (Marcuse,1978:13-14).By suggesting an "internal exigency" to art that "presupposes"political change,Marcuse seeks to escape the quandary of simultaneously supporting the politicalvalue of art and a type of art that is detached from politics.

Critical AnalysisThe Political Paradoxof Art Of Its Audience

Anatolii Lunacharsky, head of the People's Commissariat for Enlightenment,emerged from a winter 1917 meeting with V.I. Lenin to tell his fellow artists that:Onceagainhe hashad one of those ortunate ndprofoundlyxcitingdeasthathaveshocked nddelighted llofus somany imes.He intends ohave hesquaresof Moscowdecoratedwith statuesand monumentsn honorof revolutionaries,greatfightersof socialism.This denotesbothagitation or socialism nd a widefieldforoursculpturalalents omanifest hemselves(Bowlt,1978:184)quoting(Grabar,1933:155)].

The plan was undertaken with fervor. The monuments to tsars and otherreactionary elements were razed, to be replaced by "monuments intended tocommemoratethe great days of the Russian socialist revolution" (Bowlt, 1978: 185,quoting Izvestiya,14 April 1918). Unfortunately, the execution of the plan neverfulfilled its optimistic objective.The result was two types of sculpture, both repugnant to Lenin. The first groupmay have contained the appropriatepolitical intentions, but it was poorly executedand aesthetically offensive. Lenin was appalled at the lack of skill and inspirationthat these statues demonstrated.The few from this group that actually survivedtheharsh Russian climate were later intentionally destroyed.The other type of statue was the more scarce variety of respectedartists like BorisKorolev,AleksandrZlatovratsky,and GeorgiiMotovilov,who refused to compromisetheir futurist commitment. So although their work was discussed favorably in art

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TIMOTHYJ. UKEScircles, Lenin and most of the working public felt that their interest in aestheticpolitical tribute had been betrayed. The statues were thought to be too abstract,providing precious few clues as to whom the statue honored. Korolev's statue ofBakunin was never removed from its wooden scaffolding, until the day the entireproject was dismantled.Art of the audience seems to be confronted by a paradox that severely hampers itspolitical efficacy. On the one hand, if it is too blatant and immediate in its distillationof desirable and undesirable social traits, it is timebound, dull, uninspirational, andsuperficial. This is hardly the place to articulate a definitive explication of the essenceof art, but even Friedrich Engels showed concern for the liabilities of tendentious art:"I think that the bias should flow by itself from the situation and action, withoutparticular indications, and that the writer is not obliged to obtrude on the reader thefuture historical solutions of the social conflicts pictured" (Marx and Engels, 1947:45).The paradox is realized when realist art digresses from pure tendentiousness inorder to partake in art's "special" qualities, for what is immediately sacrificed is theability to control audience response with the desired specificity. Thus, Engels,Lukacs, Althusser, and other "realists" who isolate a "something special" about artrun the risk of endangering their specific political goals to other, imaginativeresponses.Even Bertolt Brecht suffered the paradox of art of its audience. For it was thebourgeois class, not the proletariat, that, tired of the war and apprehensive aboutthe future, flocked to productions like The ThreepennyOpera. They left the theater notinspired to revolt, but a bit less confused, having seen themselves in a humorouslight. Frustrated that his audience did not depart discussing the inherent gangsterismof capitalism as exemplified in the character of Macheath, Brecht decided later, inhis blatantly didactic phase, to communicate his insights more straightforwardly. Hewent to court in an effort to change the movie script and, failing that, he wrote TheThreepennyNovel, in which Macheath trades his dashing underworld characteristicsfor the mundane existence of a mercantilist. And Polly, deprived of her romanticattachment, marries Macheath only to relieve herself of the stigma of unwedmotherhood.

In writing the novel, Brecht forsook the autonomy that his plays had taken on,thus bringing his art even closer to the reality of his immediate audience. To hisdismay, the novel reached a level of popularity comparable only to that of the Sovietmonumental sculpture.

The Political Limitationsof Art At Its AudienceThe problem with art at its audience is that it is not nearly as radical as it appearsor wants to be. Dismantling the status quo limits the artistic project as much as itfrees it. By focusing on what they see as the bankrupt concepts of purity, originality,and depth, postmodernists remain trapped in the priorities and language of thatwhich they hope to oppose. Distorting and rearranging borrowed images does notdeny the fact that the images remain borrowed. In a sense, then, those whose artisticenergy is derived from the perceived inadequacies and limitations of the given, arecondemned to a similarly limiting dependency on those inadequacies:

The central purpose of art and art criticism since the early 1960's has been thedismantling of the monolithic myth of modernism and the dissolution of itsoppressive progression of great ideas and great masters . . .Pop art, for instance,

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ThePoliticalEffectsof ArtonAudiencedeliberatelyaccepted as its subjectmatter the low culture, tabloidimages rejecteddisdainfully by modernism;similarly,minimalismexaggeratedhyperbolicallytheformalist codes of late modernism,creatingspare but "theatrical"works ... .Thisgradual shift or mutation in the rigidly structured forms of modernistart has lednot to another style, but to a fully transformedconception of art founded onalternate critical premises (Wallis, 1984:xiii).

It is difficult to accept the full transformation when it is so dependent on priorconcepts. In fact, because of this dependency, it is not always clear whether thepostmodernist artwork is really an enlightened critique, or just a very competentpresentation of the forms which postmodernism opposes (thus the Warhol paradox).Thus, one often encounters elaborate explanations accompanying exhibits of art atits audience. Minimalist art-shows produce hardly minimalist brochures andcatalogs, and the titles or accoutrements of postmodernist artworks take on animportance that sometimes seems greater than the works themselves.This need for words and explanations may be taking over the execution of art atits audience, with the result that, as in the case of The ThreepennyNovel, little willremain for the artistic community. It is not surprising, then, that art critics are amongsome of the most avid supporters of art at its audience. Such artistic endeavors allowthe critics to ply their analytical and verbal skills on a vast reservoir of seeminglyrelevant meaning. In fact, the critics (with good reason) begin to believe that theymight even be more important than the art itself:

The recognitionthat the critique of representationnecessarilytakes as its objectthose types of cultural constructionswith which art traditionallydeals, suggeststhat art and artmaking might be one effective site for such critical intervention.From this point of view, the issue is less how art criticism can best serve art thanhow art can serve as a fruitful realmforcritical and theoreticalactivity.This givesto art criticism a responsibilityand a political potential it is often denied (Wallis,1984:xvi).

Because oppositional language is in the dictionary of the status quo, it is notradically disruptive or alien, and thus is vulnerable to co-optation. When "black"was declared "beautiful," or hippies "got mellow" to avoid "hassles and rip-offs," itwas not long before all such concepts were commercialized and defused. Withinmonths of the first reference to police officers as pigs, the first annual "pig bowls"were being played between rival departments. The concepts were intentionallymisplaced by the given culture's opponents, but the concepts remained familiar, evencomfortable. Art at its audience is negative without being negating, for it exists onlybecause its target exists.

The Political Isolationof Art Above Its AudienceSupporters of Theodor Adorno, especially the American contingent, have assembledan impressive array of excuses that are activated on contact with Adorno's widelydiscussed denigration of jazz. Either he did not have enough exposure to the music,or he was bothered by the term, or he could not escape a "characteristic Europeanethnocentrism" (Jay, 1973: 186).Another possibility, however, is that a commitment to art above the audience is acommitment to a certain snobbishness. By placing so much emphasis on the needfor art's uncompromising resistance to common, soothing, and simple expressions,there is a danger that the purveyors of such art are, or at least are perceived to be,

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TIMOTHYJ. LUKESuninterested in the real world. It is difficult to expect the jazz audience, which clearlyoutnumbers that of Sch6nberg, to be attracted to Adorno's theories of untaintedaesthetic alternatives when the jazz audience is described as:

vague, inarticulate followers. ... As girls, they have trained themselves to faintupon hearing the voice of a "crooner".... They call themselves "jitter-bugs,"bugs which carry out reflex movements, performersof their own ecstasy (Adorno,1967: 128).According to Adorno, the power of art is its ability to "avoid concessions" to thestatus quo, and to invoke its own untainted system in the face of the givendegeneration. Yet the method of provoking a valid political response may beattractive only to the social elements that Adorno wishes to displace. It is doubtfulwhether he could ever gain the support of the "girls" in the jazz audience, but quitepossible that, although perhaps for the wrong reasons, he would appeal to thebarbaric elite which he so despises. Thus, postmodernist critics hardly exaggeratewhen they depict a moral decline of modernism, where "radically individualist artistsall too often found comfortable niches in the society they professed to despise,becoming little more than anxious apologists for the system" (Lawson, 1981: 41).There is another problem for the detached, purified "system" of Greenberg andAdorno, however, and that is that it is doomed to its own "formulization"-wherebythe system becomes all important, and thus degenerates into infinite and unimportantpermutations of the same alluring structure. Adorno himself noticed the quicknesswith which the twelve-tone scale sapped insight and imagination from itspractitioners, finally advising against its utilization (Adorno, 1967: 166-167).This preoccupation with formula, with an intellectual and analytical commitmentto counteract the easiness of the given barbarism, may be especially ineffectual in asociety that itself has become so formulaic and analytical. In fact, the time may havecome when pleasing, simple, and naturalistic depictions are the most provocative.The "organized vacuity" of the twelve-tone scale, intended to inspire a feeling ofdiscomfort and "unnaturalness" in the listener, may now be as soothing as pastoralimages once were. Not only is analytical art subject to formulization; it is subject toa pleasant identification. We may now exist in a time where a more human analysiscan only be inspired by an inattention to systems and formulas:

Marxist critics assume that the "natural attitude" to things is the enemy, for itimplies a refusal to suspend our relations with them for the sake of an analysis ofour attitude toward them. . . . But in a world overdetermined by analyticabstraction-artificial understandings of all kinds-which seem to have an"expressivity" of their own, the natural attitude toward things becomes adesirable if elusive goal, a critical factorfor survival, and the only method for therecovery of concreteness and engagement (Kuspit, 1983: 45).The Political Impetuousity of Art Beyond Its Audience

More than fifteen years after writing TheBirth of Tragedy,Friedrich Nietzsche reflectedon his early work in "An Attempt at Self-Criticism." He retreated from his youthfulsuggestion that a certain kind of art, resembling art beyond its audience, might beable to "overleap" the disenchantment with an empty, terrifying existence. It wouldseem that Nietzsche anticipates Marcuse who, with the young Nietzsche, was anxiousto draw the "fairest form" into existence by transcending the present "terrifying"one:

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ThePoliticalEffectsof Art on Audiencewould t not benecessaryor the tragic man of such a culture, in view of his self-educationfor seriousness and terror,to desire tragedy as his own properHelen,and to exclaim with Faust:

Should otmy onging verleaphedistanceAnddraw he airest ormintoexistence?"Would it not be necessary?"-No,thriceno 0 you young romantics: t would notbe necessary But it is highly probable that it will end that way-namely,"comforted," as it is written, in spite of all self-educationfor seriousness andterror, "comfortedmetaphysically"-in sum, as romanticsend, as Christians.No You ought to learn the art of this-worldlyomfortfirst (Nietzsche, 1968:26)For Marcuse, a liberated environment is one in which there is a coincidence ofadvanced technology and aesthetic vision. The technology is needed in order that theimagination need not be imprisoned in Wordsworth's dream world. The aesthetic

vision is needed to stimulate thinking about a new, harmonious relationship withexternality.Marcuse believes that a particular type of aesthetic practice represents andstimulates this attachment to harmony; I believe Marcuse's liberative aesthetics isclosest to the romantic version, and I have labelled it art beyond its audience.Marcuse believes that in the right technological environment this type of aestheticpractice informs those involved in it that they had better make physical, material,and political efforts to control the purveyors of technology and domination, lest theaesthetic transcendence becomes the last victim to one-dimensionality. The aesthetesrevolt not only in the knowledge that the imagination should not be repressed, butalso in the knowledge that the fruits of the imagination may now be realized in thematerial world.Yet does this mean that the romantic vision can be trusted to aid in the realizationof a liberated society, or does the romantic perspective recede from action, even

though the technological environment is ripe for it? As Arnold Hauser points out, itmay have been true that Friedrich Schlegel and the German Romantics wereadmirers of Metternich, but "Metternich himself was no romantic" (Hauser, n.d.:v. 3, p. 175). Although an enhanced relationship with externality might be anappropriate political vision, it may be left to normal politicians, immune to the lureof romanticism, to protect and promote the visionaries.Kant discusses the sublime, a category of aesthetic stimuli that, despiteintimidating awesomeness, is pleasing because we can bask in the accomplishmentsof subjectivity and morality. We receive sublime pleasure from a rushing waterfallbecause we have imposed a human meaning on nature despite its most intimidatingmanifestations.

But in this capacityit is a might enablingus to assert ourindependenceas againstthe influence of nature, to degradewhat is great in respectof the latter to the levelof what is little, and thus to locate the absolutelygreat only in the proper estateof the Subject (Kant, 1964: 121).Of course, Marcuse does not retain Kant's aesthetic category of the sublime, forclearly, Marcuse's "improvement" of Kant rests on the assertion that all nature hasinherent, rather than asserted purposiveness, and that individuals have no reason tomaintain their fear of any aspect of nature. To Marcuse, nature is beautiful, notintimidating; in fact, nature's beauty has become so accessible that aesthetic formneed no longer alter or repel sensual input for the sake of an orderly, harmonious,

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TIMOTHYJ. UKESand receptive relationship to human existence. This beautification of nature, calledsensual beauty by Kant, is distinguished from the sublime in terms of its effect oncognitive activity: sensual beauty, not surprisingly, puts the mind at ease (Kant,1964: 125).Thus, the "beautification" of Kantian aesthetics, which follows necessarily fromMarcuse's "shattering"the Kantian duality of subject and object, seems to decrease,rather than enhance, the possibility of the materialization of aesthetic insights.Romantic art's indolence may not be due so much to the presence or absence of asupportive technological environment, but to qualities of the art itself.

ConclusionI think that it is enough to say in conclusion that for the four artforms discussed,there is reason to doubt their effective employment in the political arena. However,such a conclusion is bound to foster considerations of a grander vista. For instance,is art in general a poor means to elicit practical and desirable responses from itsaudience? I tend to think that is the case; yet at this late juncture, I can offer onlyheuristics, and do so without ever discussing the "essentials" of art, or politics.First of all, there is empirical evidence which questions the causal association ofart to political change. Vytautus Kavolis's findings (Kavolis, 1972) on the artisticfloweringsof seventeenth-centuryHolland, Renaissance Italy, and ancient Egypt andAssyria, along with my own investigation (Lukes, 1985:pp. 147-149) of fifth-centuryAthens, argue that proliferations of art tend to occur just after periods of greatpolitical and military upheaval. This suggests that art is better at facilitating changethan at creating or resisting it. It seems that if art is to have a social significance itis as product and ameliorator of an atmosphere of daunting reconnections.And then there is the problem of predictable response. Hans Haacke, whose artmay presently be closest to the art of its audience variety, still finds it necessary toinclude written explanations of his work, lest they be misinterpreted. ("A photographwithout caption can be interpreted in many ways-the caption directs theinterpretation" [quoted in Siegel, 1984: 112]). This, in fact, may help to explain theapparent connection between art and politics. Artists interested in pursuing politicalgoals use their skill and respect as artists to attract an admiring audience, only thento impart unambiguous, non-artistic, political messages in some appropriateintermission. The art may be indirectly political, then, but not essentially so.This essay commenced with two possible ways of examining the relationshipof artand its audience-either the political effect of the audience on art, or the politicaleffect of art on its audience. At this point I believe that the former perspective mayyield more edifying investigations than the latter.

Notes1. Here is a good chanceto promotea pairof essaysI wrotethatextractpolitical essonsfrom Machiavelli'splays:(Lukes, 1981)and (Lukes,1984).2. I chose tojettisontemporalor thematic onsistencyortwo reasons.First,whenarranged

thematically,he fourartisticmovementsormaninterestingontinuum rommostto least"engagement"with the audience.Secondly, his essayis not so much interestedn thehistorical "causes"of the four movements,and thus can sacrificeprecisehistoricalplacement.Forsuch a discussion ee (Jameson,1984).3. Benjaminquoteshis hero,BertoltBrecht:

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ThePoliticalEffectsof Art onAudienceTragedies and operas are being written all the time, apparentlywith a trusty stageapparatusat hand, whereas in reality they do nothingbut supply an apparatuswhichis obsolete. 'This confusion among musicians, writers and critics about theirsituation,' says Brecht, 'has enormous consequences, which receive far too littleattention. Believing themselves to be in possession of an apparatus which in realitypossesses them, they defend an apparatus over which they no longer have control,which is no longer, as they still believe, a meansfor the producersbut has become ameans to be used against he producers' (Benjamin, 1977:98).4. "For the dialecticaltreatmentof this problem [tendencyversusquality]-and now I cometo the heart of the matter-the rigid isolated object (work, novel, book) is of no usewhatsoever. It must be inserted into the context of living social relations." (Benjamin,1977:87).5. Even forGeorgLukacs,who admittedlysupportsa more "creativerealism"(Lukacs,1977:36), art can only draw out of an audience "thoughts and feelings," which perhapsdormant,predatedthe aesthetic extraction. Lukacs differswith Benjaminand Brechtonly

to the extent that he believes a certainkind of literature is unique in its ability to inspirean expanded vision of reality. Lukacs thus prefersthe metaphor and linearityof ThomasMann to the interruptednarrativesof Brecht.Of Mann, Lukacssays:"He knowsthoughtsand feelingsgrow out of the life of society and how experiencesand emotionsare partsofthe total complex of reality.As a realist he assigns these parts to theirrightfulplace withinthe total life context" (Lukacs, 1977: 36).6. The "songs" were importantpartsof epic theater.Hans Eisler,who wrote many of them,insisted upon integrating lyrics into orchestralmusic, since music without words "gainedits great importance only under capitalism." [quoted in (Benjamin, 1977: 96)]Simultaneously, songs grated against capitalist taste and exposed capitalist specialization.7. Warhol once told an interviewer,"If you want to know all about Andy Warhol,just lookat the surface of my painting and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behindit" (Hughes, 1982:7).8. To get at Warhol's "semioticpractice,"Crone found it necessary to "divide the pictorialanalysis into three sections. . . 1. clothing,2. gesture,and 3. hairstyles";(Crone, 1987:88).9. Warhol'ssuperficialityseems quite genuinein light of the recentpublicationof his diaries.Claiming to offer a deeper insight into Warhol's character, the diary's editor explainedhow she recorded his insights: "We'd warm up for a whilejust chatting-he was alwayscurious about everything,he'd ask a millionquestions:'What areyou havingfor breakfast?Do you have Channel 7 on? How can I clean my can opener-should I do it with atoothbrush?'Then he'd give me his cash expensesand tell me all about the day and nightbefore. Nothing was too insignificantfor him to tell the Diary" (Warhol, 1989:xvii).10. "The representationaltext of the grid however also precedesthe surface,comes beforet,preventingeven that literal surface frombeing anythinglike an origin" (Krauss, 1981:57).11. "But fromourperspective, the one fromwhich we see that the signifiercannot be reified;that its objecthood, its quiddity, is only a fiction;thatevery signifier s itself the transparentsignified of an already-givendecision to carve it out as the vehicle of a sign-from thisperspective there is no opacity, but only a transparency that opens onto a dizzying fallinto a bottomless system of reduplication"(Krauss, 1981:57).12. It would be much more difficult to attempta schematic presentationof Greenberg's deasregardingart and politics, given the embryonicand ever-changingnature of his comments.Like so many other leftists of the time, Greenbergbecame a staunch anti-communistafterthe war. At that time, perhaps in order to rationalize his simultaneous attraction tomodernism and conservatism, Greenberg refused to admit any political relevance tomodernist art. See Cox, 1982: 141-157.

13. Adorno praises the later works of Beethoven, especially his MissaSolemnis,or rejecting"the illusory appearance of the unity of subjectiveand objective" (Adorno, 1976: 123).14. Thus the darkerside of romanticism,which might include Goya's "SaturnDevouring hisChildren," or Gericault's"Raft of the Medusa," or Delacroix's "Medea."15. Benedetto Croce has argued that the eventual decline of romanticism was due to its

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inability to maintain a concept of faith (see Croce, 1934).16. See Hauser, n.d.: v. 3, p. 175. But for a rebuttal regarding the escapism of romanticism,see Barzun, 1943: 15.17. This is not the place for a definitive proof of Marcuse's romanticism, nor is such a proofreally necessary in light of statements such as: "The aesthetic form in art has the aestheticform in nature as its correlate. If the idea of beauty pertains to nature as well as to art,this is not merely an analogy" (Marcuse, 1972: 67).

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Marcuse, H. (1972). CounterrevolutionndRevolt.Boston: Beacon Press.Marcuse, H. (1978). TheAesthetic imension:Toward Critiquef MarxistAesthetics. oston:Beacon Press.Marx, K. and F. Engels (1947). LiteraturendArt:SelectionsromTheirWritings.New York:International Publishers.Nietzsche, F. (1968).BasicWritingsfNietzscheWalterKaufmann, trans.). New York:ModernLibrary.Sekula,A. (1978). "DismantlingModernism,Reinventing Documentary(Notes on the Politicsof Representation)."TheMassachusettseview Winter):859-883.Siegel, J. (1984). "Leon Golub/Hans Haacke: What Makes Art Political?"ArtsMagazine 8(April): 107-113.Wallis, B. (1984). "What's Wrong With This Picture?An Introduction."In ArtAfterModernism: ethinking epresentationB. Wallis, ed.), pp. xi-xviii. New York: Museum ofContemporaryArt.Warhol, A. (1989). TheAndyWarholDiaries(Pat Hackett, ed.). New York:Warner Books.Wordsworth,W. (1969). "Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey." InWordsworth:oeticalWorks.Thomas Hutchinson, ed.), pp. 163-165. London: OxfordUniversity Press.

BiographicalNoteTIMOTHYJ. LUKES is Associate Professor of Political Science at Santa ClaraUniversity. He wrote much of this essay while serving as a visiting professor at LoyolaUniversity Rome Center of Liberal Arts. His most recent book is, AmericanPolitics ina Changing World, published in 1990 by Brooks/Cole. ADDRESS:Department ofPolitical Science, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053, USA.Acknowledgment. rofessors Brigid Barton, John Bokina, and Eric Hanson providedvaluable expertise and advice.

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