Prepositional Phases: The Political Effects of Art on Audience Author(s): Timothy J.

Lukes Reviewed 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. 67-86 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1601422 . Accessed: 12/03/2012 22:41
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International PoliticalScience Review(1991), Vol. 12, No. 1, 67-86

Prepositional Phases: The Political Effects of Art on Audience

TIMOTHY J. LUKES

ABSTRACT. Social realism, postmodernism, modernism, and romanticism have all been pressed to resist politically the excesses of modern industrial society. The purported political fortes of these movements can be arranged and analyzed around simple prepositions, if not propositions. Social realism is of its audience, highlighting progressive tendencies while disparaging laggards. Postmodernism is championed as disruptive of habitual behaviors, and thus is at its audience. Modernism is said to inspire a purer alternative which is above its audience. And romanticism goes beyond its audience to levels of unfettered transcendence. After justifying this prepositional taxonomy, this essay exposes the weakness of each artform's connection with politics, finally speculating on the possibility of a more universal incompatibility of art and politics.

To discuss art and politics is to discuss the audience; and there are, I believe, two basic ways to do it. The first is to examine the effect of the audience (widely construed) on art, that in the present focus translates to, how do political things appear in artworks? Attention to this question pays substantial dividends to one's accounting of a particular artwork. Some familiarity, for instance, with the attempt of the ruling "nine" to fashion their republic on Aristotelian-Aquinian principles adds much 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" for literary treatments.1 And contemporary works like Ferenc Temesi's Dust intentionally blur or even deny the boundaries between fact and fiction in accounts that highlight the artistic license in historical recitation. The claim is that a superior understanding of historical and political "reality" is the result, since "objective" accounts hide interpretation behind method. I have little doubt that much of this journal issue will be taken up with the effect of politics (the audience) on art. My intention, however, is to reverse the causal arrow, and examine the effect art has on its audience. I do so with the impression that most such examinations have been poor, tainted by advocacy. The maturation of western capitalism seems to have provoked various strategies for an aesthetic, cum political, resistance. Four artistic movements (listed in thematic
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ThePoliticalEffectsof Art on Audience

rather than chronological order') in particular have accrued political relevance: social realism, postmodernism, modernism, and romanticism. So after brief (and highly instrumental) discussions of each movement, I will turn to what I think are the most convincing accounts (mostly from non-artists) of the movements' political possibilities. None of the accounts are wholly convincing, so in the final parts of the essay, I discuss my reasons for questioning the various connections between art and audience. To help differentiatethe four types of relationship between art and its audience, I have assigned a simple preposition to each. These prepositions can help distinguish the various positions in a way that may facilitate comparison. For those who see a political potential in social realism, art is most effective when it is of its audience. For postmodernism (along with dadaism), it is art at the audience which is preferable. the audience. For modernism (along with various forms of classicism), it is art above the And for romanticism (and the various neo-romantic movements) it is art beyond audience. Not to forsake obligatory academic rituals, let me admit to overstating and simplifying aesthetic distinctions. Clearly, an artwork can be simultaneously of and at its audience; and aesthetic interpretations can depend in part upon time frame and audience perspective. I do think, however, that the four "prepositionalphases" representfour important prototypes of contact between art and its audience, and that an artificial categorization like this can render the discussion of art and politics a bit more manageable. Art Of Its Audience According to Walter Benjamin, artists have been wrestling with a non-existent dilemma. Having recognized the ideological component of bourgeois entertainment literature, progressive artists ask how they can inspire the appropriate political response while at the same time produce works of quality. Behind the dilemma is the assumption that aesthetic quality and tendentiousness are opposed. For Benjamin, the imperative of artistic aloofness is itself a type of tendentiousness. Artists who submit to the dilemma of "progressive" art are submitting not to the pressure of aesthetic purity, but to the pressure of an outmoded and exploitative ideology that sanctifies autonomy while condoning automation, heroism while condoning banality.3 For Benjamin, no art is aloof or disconnected. Art that appears to be aloof is tightly connected to a power structure which uses claims of exclusive insight and qualitative transcendence to prolong in the laboring classes' regressive and opiating attitudes of autonomy and spirituality. Rather than encourage artists to maintain the facade of detachment, Benjamin shocks them into a recognition of the unavoidable attachment;and having done that, he can then ask the artist to choose the most honest and progressivemeans to portray the connection. Aloofness is a highly political posture in an atmosphere where political and not just aesthetic figures can profit from its mystique. Because Benjamin has a vision of a "better" world, he can specify those aspects of the audience which are worthy of emphasis. Maublanc "and many of his comrades" (Benjamin, 1977: 102) floundered after their rejection of bourgeois art, since they failed to replace the ossified forms with more accurate Marxist ones. Benjamin offers a rudder for his meandering associates: Will he succeed in furtheringthe unificationof the means of intellectual

LUKES TIMOTHYJ. production? Does he see ways of organizing the intellectual workers within their actual production process? Has he suggestions for changing the function of the novel, of drama, of poetry? The more completely he can address himself to these tasks, the more correct his thinking will be and, necessarily, the higher will be the technical quality of his work (Benjamin, 1977: 102-103).

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Here is the political essence of art of the audience, or "social realist" art. Based on a dialectical (in which case "social" realism can become the more specific "socialist" realism) or some such criterion4 for sifting progress from reaction, realist art hopes to capture and draw out of the audience those traits that the reactionary forces suppress. The alternative is not visionary or transcendent; rather, it is clear and developed for those who choose to recognize it. The political task of art, then, is to aid in the isolation and clarification (as opposed to invention) of progressive alternatives, along with, of course, disrupting and demeaning the status quo. Realist art may be a "small cog or small screw" in the productive machinery, as Lenin would have it, or it may be of the more rarefied variety 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, broader characteristics of its audience.

Epic Theater
Bertolt 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, for Brecht, 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. The diverse socialist individual gains inspiration from the diversity of epic theater. The montage motif inspires a montage individual: Let me remind you of the 'songs,'6 whose principal function consists in interrupting the action. Here, then-that is to say, with the principle of interruption-the epic theater adopts a technique which has become familiar to you in recent years through film and radio, photography and the press. I speak of the technique of montage, for montage interrupts the context into which it is inserted (Benjamin, 1977: 99). In fact, Benjamin connects epic theater to the daily newspaper. A newspaper does not "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 not separate from the lives of its audience; it is part of the process of life. Likewise, an audience cannot help but see itself in an artistic presentation that employs the newspaper motif; or more accurately, confronted with such a motif, the audience finds it impossible to withdraw itself from the artwork. If there is any linearity to epic theater, it is to be supplied by the audience. Sitting passively while absorbing a predetermined meaning is not only a trait of bourgeois art, but it is also an aspect of capitalistic manipulation of human productivity. Art,

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like labor, ought properly to be an aspect of communal interchange. Thus, the relationship of art and its audience ought to be such that the distinction itself is ever
diminishing.

Art At Its Audience

Rather than a "small cog or screw" in the revolutionary machinery, some see the role of art as throwing a wrench into the works of modern society. This is art that shuns complicity, usually because it can see no logic in reality, despite the efforts of its target to establish one. Unlike art of its audience, this kind of art is not particularly taken by any of its audience's traits or hidden potentials. If it has a notion of progress at all, it tends to focus on the salutary effects of disruption. Like epic theater and other forms of social realism, art at the audience rejects the detachment of beauty from reality. Often called "anti-art," this artform decries the escape that "beautiful" art can provide. However, instead of "informing" an audience with courageous accuracy, art at reality challenges its audience. Art of the audience values certain traits within the audience, while art at the audience is wary that any audience trait is of unassailable value. In the dadaist period, the pretensions of the bourgeois artform were assaulted (rather than counterposed) by nonsense poems the verses of which are chosen from a hat; or by simultaneous poetry, which involves a group of poets all chanting or yelling in differentlanguages simultaneously;or by sound poems, in which the author attempts to avoid utterances that even approximate words [See (Hunter, 1972)]. Marcel Duchamp depicted bourgeois individuals as machines in many of his works, dramatizingthe mechanistic nature of what were thought to be matters of "spiritual" autonomy-especially love, sexuality, and creativity. The bachelors, for example, in "The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even," were represented by a paddlewheel, a grinder and an assortment of metallic funnels. More recently, the structuralist (and/or post-structuralist) revolution in philosophy has inherited the dadaist perspective. Sloughing off the claims of aesthetic or any other type of representational purity, Foucault and his colleagues excavate the cultural myths that are contained in representation,linking representationdirectly to the power centers of culture. Thus, an important role is given to insights that unmask images that fit only because they are consistent with a flawed, perhaps limiting whole. Meaning cannot be retrievedhistoricallysince a historical perspective retains a pleasing evolution of the dominant mode of categorizing ("indexing") experience. Meaning is more deeply understood if it is extracted contextuallyshown to be contingent upon a particular mode of categorization. Postmodernistartists, bringing these structuralistconcerns to art, are particularly disturbed by three tenacious aspects of modern culture-depth, originality, and purity. With varying degrees of tendentiousness, these artists show how and why the dominant culture maintains these obsolete concepts. For instance, a perceived haven of depth could do much to defuse a burgeoning disgust with rampant superficiality. Likewise, an aesthetic haven of originality can quieten those who detect the robotic aspects of modern existence. And, finally, an aesthetic bastion of purity can cleanse the consciences of modern participants in iniquity (Sekula, 1978: 859).

Depth
Andy 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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the risk of eliciting the same, "uh, gee, great" with which he responds to all such analyses (Hughes, 1982: 6). His superficiality is so thorough7 that even labelling it as superficial taints the labeller with status quo pretentiousness. But despite, or rather because of, this total indifference to relevance, Warhol's work has been described as punctuated with political meaning. For analysts like Rainer Crone, any admission on Warhol's part of a deeper meaning to his work would grant legitimacy to the false language of depth with which he would have to make such a statement.8 The purity of Warhol's criticism is demonstrated precisely in his total aversion to criticizing, since such criticism would be surrendering to a belief that there are symbols of communication that can convey a meaning that is outside, or deeper, than the normal mode of discourse. Warhol, it is argued, sees modern life as so totally superficial that no statement, critical or otherwise, can break through the language of marketing, mass production, and blind appetitiveness.9 Statements that claim a deeper meaning are only better renditions of the manufactured sincerity of a Jerry Lewis telethon. basks in the trivial and mundane. It elicited Thus, Warhol's magazine Interview both frequent dinner invitations from covergirl Nancy Reagan and laudatory analyses from students of Marx (Gidal, 1971). Warhol's work is the most distilled, innocuous, and refined superficiality; thus, he attracts the ultimate practitioners. Yet because he is so selectively and perfectly superficial, he inspires in some a "point where a void is seen to yawn beneath the discourse of promotion" (Hughes, 1982: 8). Originality Aided by the age of mechanical reproduction (and by Benjamin's famous essay on the topic [Benjamin, 1968]), postmodernism attempts to demonstrate that the supposedly novel insights of the artist are nothing more than the reproduction of dominant representational matrices that, in the case of the blank canvas, merely seem to offer a fresh start. The reality for this so-called "grid," however, is that "the copyright expired sometime in antiquity and for many centuries . . has been in the public domain" (Krauss, 1981: 56). Not only that. Even the very first user of the pictorial grid was hardly original; for the geometry and dimensionality of the grid predispose it to a particular kind of representation. And the limitations of the grid are matched by the perceptual and historical biases of the artist. In fact, claim the postmodernists, the whole dichotomy of original-repetition is a historical construct in which the artist can wallow in a false vanity and innocence. "The self as origin is safe from contamination by tradition because it possesses a kind of originary naivete. Hence Brancusi's dictum, 'When we are 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 of Sherrie Levine. She often employs "pirated prints" (Krauss, 1981: 64) as subjects for her photographs. In one instance, Levine photographed six copyrighted prints of Edward Weston that depicted various classical poses of Weston's son. By intentionally and blatantly violating proprietary regulations, Levine questions the legitimacy of claims of artistic origin. If the Weston prints borrow their balance and presentation from Phidias and Polygnotus, then Levine has as much claim to their origin as Weston. By choosing to reproduce photographs with such a classical link, Levine discloses the tenuousness of originality claims.

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Purity
The rejectionof purity brings the postmodernistsclose to the social realism of Walter Benjamin. In fact, Benjamin has been adopted by the postmodernistsas one of their own. It is only selective perception, however, that allows such an alliance because Benjamin and the postmodernistshave very differentreasons for opposing purity. As stated earlier, the montage is supported by the realists in order to stimulate the realization of their vision of a complex socialist individual. Purity of artistic presentation is seen as an ideological prop for specialization of labor. For the postmodernists, purity is opposed not because there is a more progressive replacement, but only because aesthetic purity does not exist, and because those who practice it are locked into a delusion. Postmodernism attacks its modernist predecessors for claiming to have cleansed and partitioned the various artformsin a way that allows unspoiled revelation to fill the canvas or clay. The postmodernists argue that there are no such unspoiled revelations. The modernists (led by Clement Greenbergwho will be discussed later) claim that proper art cannot be compared to anything outside of the bounds of its medium, that it is self-contained, and thus pure of outside contamination. The postmodernists argue that not only is the so-called pure artworkconditioned a prioriby the physical confines of the "grid"'u (in the case of painting, for instance), but that the images transferred to the grid can never escape the preconditioning of 'human perception and the interferenceof human intent.1 As long as art is produced in a physical world, via the intermediation of human perception, there can be no valid escape to a realm of purity. The work of photographer Robert Rauschenberg has been described as a "cataclysmic rupture" (Crimp, 1980: 43) of the modern devotion to purity. In one especially blatant series of photographs, Rauschenberg appropriates the images of and Rubens's Venus at Her Toiletand reproduces them in Velazquez's RokebyVenus various quadrants of numerous photographs. But going beyond the origin-doubting studies of Sherrie Levine, Rauschenberg places the classic images on a field of seemingly random objects and implements-trucks, helicopters, clouds, birds, keys, statues, water towers and dancers. By integrating what were held as pure objects of art into objects of the "real world," Rauschenberg draws the art into what was its true realm all along. This is the postmodern recognition of purity's imaginary status. The Politics of Art At Its Audience This kind of art, dadaism and postmodernism, cannot be considered of its audience because of its intentional distancing. Rather, from its detached position, this kind of art dismantles (deconstructs?)the given prejudices and illusions. Nor can this art be considered above or beyond the audience, simply because it is almost wholly dependent on extant forms for its critical statements. Dada needs the bourgeois dictionaries and poems to cut up and reassemble, just as the work of Levine and Rauschenberg is meaningless without the prior experience of Weston and Rubens. This is why this art is most aptly described as at its audience-highly critical, but highly, and ironically, dependent and focused. One critic has described the political vision of postmodernism as finding "its true home in the left wing of the American Democratic Party. Long gone is the dream of the unity of radical theory and practice. In its place are the innocuous pieties of the rainbow coalition" (Bokina, 1988: 170). Innocuous or not, the politics of art at its audience is constricted by its preoccupation with criticism. Postmodernistpolitics is

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unable to construct a "dream of unity" because it does not allow for representations that are pure of any self-serving manipulation of communicative signs. Thus, the most 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 declining culture. It thus sets out to destroy those notions, demonstrating that the elite aren't what they are cracked up to be. In supporting the destruction of pleasing but insidious illusions, there is an implication that shaking up and expanding the interests of the audience is a good thing. Feminist art, multi-cultural art, folk art, multi-media art are essential aspects of the postmodernist movement. Yet there can be no firm justification that the insights of newer, less pretentious aesthetic practices are more progressive or true than the forms they replace. Nor is it possible to link the multifarious critical protrusions in an ordered constellation, since the rearrangement of the postmodern furniture does not suggest a satisfaction with any floorplan. The new and quintessentially postmodern Musee d'Orsay, intended to "focus on the relationship between art and politics," managed to arrange its holdings "as a series of startling, dramatic vignettes" (Mainardi, 1987: 31, 360). Thus, those who claim a political significance to art at its audience tend to support a volatile pluralism.

Art Above Its Audience

The vulgarity of capitalism, the brutality of Stalinism, and especially the banality of fascism propelled yet another perspective regarding the relationship between art and its audience. Disgusted and disheartened with the extent to which unprecedented barbarism was becoming socially integrated, artists and art commentators returned to art forms that transported audiences abovethe inhumanity, hoping that this perspective, labelled "modernism," might jar them from passivity. Adding to the pressure to recondition the artistic venture was the discovery that certain art endeavors themselves had become major contributors to this passivity. Two such deformities are "affirmative art" and "kitsch," each providing inspiration to its audience. proponents of art above Kitsch and Affirmative Art Kitsch, as described by Clement Greenberg, grows out of the peculiarities of advanced capitalism. Since capitalist manufacture demands certain intellectual tools of 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 challenge and divert their new skills. Such a desire, however, confronts the constraints that workers 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, a popular literacy develops that is simplistic, convenient, and unsubtle, ratified by an elite that fears and discourages anything more than a "working knowledge" of printed words and numbers. Kitsch, therefore, quenches the primitive literacy of the masses without unleashing the more inquisitive and non-conformistaspects of sophisticatedartistry. In kitsch, the quest for the completely new is exchanged for the cute presentation of "new twists" on old themes (Greenberg, 1939: v. 1, p. 12). The potentially threatening intellectual development required by capitalist mass production is diverted into an aesthetic appreciation that employs formulas and mechanisms that parallel the rigidified intelligence needed in the workplace. Sufficient are mere variations on the rage.

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If kitsch defuses contemporaryart, it is Theodor Adorno's concept of "affirmative art" that explains the ability of modern society to extract the agitation potential from past forms. For Adorno, warehousinggreat art and arrangingit as if it were a medley of hit tunes deprives it of the real-world suffering and 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 the perception that beauty has no place in the mainstream.
The music industry, which further degrades this musical supply by galvanizing it into a shrine, merely confirmsthe state of consciousnessof the listener, for whom the harmony of the Viennese classicism-attained through bitter sacrifice-and the bursting longing of Romanticism have both been placed upon the market as household ornaments (Adorno, 1973: 9).

Modernism
How are kitsch and affirmative art to be overcome, then? The solution is recourse to modernism, and Clement Greenberg is its most famous and articulate defender. For Greenberg, there is such a paucity of stimulating and edifying references in the everyday world that good art, although it must necessarily have content, must "detach" (Greenberg, 1939: v. 1, p. 7) itself from considerations of content and concentrate on form. For Greenberg, the proper status for art in the contemporary situation is one of purity and limited accessibility. It is art above its audience. Because Greenberg is displeased with the dialectical options revealed in normal life, he establishes art as an alternative source of edification. But in order to provide any kind of alternative, art must purify itself of its material environment. Thus, art is validated only in reference to itself, only in reference to its medium. It has been in search of the absolute that the avant-gardehas arrivedat "abstract" or "nonobjective" art-and poetry, too. The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms, in the way nature itself is valid, in the way a landscape-not its picture-is aesthetically valid; something given,increate, 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 firmly the purest branch of modernism (or at least Greenberg's rooted in cubism-perhaps modernism). Like the cubists, Pollock purged painting of the corrupting influences of exteriority, including other artistic media. Sculptural shading was replaced by pure, unnatural color. Subtle sculptural curves were replaced by prominent, linear brushstrokes. And geometric shapes, conforming to the dimensionality and shape of the grid, replaced natural and literary forms. Greenberg's and Pollock's modernism represented a self-contained universe, unwilling to admit extraneous, diverting clutter. Greenberg often calls this "high" art, just as he warns against the allure of lower forms. Modernist art cannot be appreciated "without effort" (Greenberg, 1939: v. 1, p. 19). Because it is so tenuously connected to the contented present, it demands extrication from the easy-chair of mindless consumption. Yet the extrication is crucial, given the paucity of other sources of stimulation. In fact, Greenberg hangs on modernist art the responsibility for energizing a stalled dialectic. Although "retiring from the public altogether," the modernist artist is shouldered with the responsibility of finding "a path along which it would be possible to keep culture

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in the midst of ideological confusion and violence." There are obvious political moving implications here. This is not an ordinary path. It is a higher road, above the "world of common, extroverted experience [which] has been renounced" (Greenberg, 1939: v. 1, pp. 8-9). Shunning politics, this art above its audience portrays a newer, purer system that is unavailable to the aesthetically ignorant. For more precision on this apolitical politics, we must turn to Theodor Adorno.12 For Adorno, the epitome of modernist art is the music of Arnold Schonberg. And an analysis of Adorno's position on Sch6nberg can be helpful in tracing the political ramifications of art above its audience. The Politics of Art Above Its Audience Like Greenberg, Adorno is disgusted with the "business-as-usual" of his society. Even more aggravating, though, is the proliferationof art that dances and harmonizes around the depravity. For Adorno, harmony and dance only assist in making consistent and unified what is irrational and destructive: "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric" (Adorno, 1967: 34). Adorno vehemently attacks the music of Igor Stravinsky, and especially his employment of the dance medium. Adorno is not unreservedly opposed to the communalism and consonance that dance portrays, but he believes that unity is hardly a rational position when the unification coagulates in a society of manufactured desires and needs. There may be times when communal forms are constructive; yet when the communal entity becomes so constricting that it prevents any autonomous activity, the only art that can be considered constructive is that which opposes consonance and rejects communality, that which is purified
and detached.13

So instead of reconciling unresolved societal dissonance by retreating into a world of only musical harmony, Sch6nberg (followed by Adorno) turns to atonality, a musical genre that does not allow any form of premature reconciliation. Indeed, the insistence on avoiding tonality and consistency precludes arbitrariness, in that it becomes consistent in inconsistency, consonant in dissonance. The twelve-tone row, invented by Sch6nberg, prohibits the repetition of any one note until all eleven others have been played. By avoiding premature "conciliation," Sch6nberg's music reveals the dissonances of the present system, but within an opposing system. Thus the twelve-tone technique (or the grid of the modernist painter) distinguishes itself from art of reality by promoting itself as pure and detached from the given. And it distinguishes itself from art at reality because it opposes the irrationality of the given within a structured, organized, enlightened alternative. So while art at reality seems essentially linked to that which it opposes, Sch6nberg's music and modernist art dramatize the vacuity of modern society with the inspiration of an untainted, selfcontained alternative structure.
Its [advanced music's] truth appears guaranteed more by its denial of any meaning in organized society, of which it will have no part-accomplished by its own 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 two things. First, it reveals a contradiction (in the case of Sch6nberg, the contradiction between bourgeois utility and rationality), and thus breaks down the absolute posture of 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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of 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 its audience, then, is the presentation of a discrete "other," that is felt to be indispensable to any relevant evaluation of the given. It has an indispensable political relevance in the contemporary situation where less radical diversions are rendered harmless.

Art Beyond Its Audience

Jacques Barzun has referred to the rise of romanticism in the nineteenth century as the "Biological Revolution" (Barzun, 1943: 54). According to Barzun, romanticism reflects a concern that Newtonian physics, although responsible for wondrous discoveries of universal order, has imposed a heavy toll on the human spirit. Emotion has been sacrificed to cold reason, and nature itself has been suspended. Thus, the biological concerns are not so much opposed to the physical, but added to them; the romanticists do not reject reason, but only recognize its insufficiencies. Although some do recommend a return to invigorating chaos, most romanticists invoke a new integration of reason and emotion, nature and the individual. In his "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," William Wordsworth provides an interesting lesson in the main tenets of romanticism. After five years "mid the din of towns and cities," with their "hours of weariness" (Wordsworth, 1969: lines 26-28), Wordsworth returns to the pastoral setting of Tintern Abbey, the peace and beauty of which allow him a
... tranquil restoration:-feelings too

Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On 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 a transcendent reverie in the possibility of a harmonious connection to external reverie that would be hampered by any preoccupation with prior phenomena-a arrangements. While with an eye made quiet by the power Of 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 much interested in establishing a relationship with the audience as it is in transcending or going beyondit. The restriction on dance after Auschwitz condemned even Adorno's seemingly detached art to an eternal connection with the serious world. In order to art was restricted in retain its instructional element-its "aboveness"-Adorno's terms of appropriate directions. Romantic art, on the other hand, feels no such obligation to the given, and so it is quite happy to suggest dance or any other transcendence of the given reality, even a disastrous reality. Art beyondits audience may be connected to reality in terms of its referents and possibilities, but it has no preconceived 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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that the human niche in nature ["this unintelligible world" (Wordsworth, 1969: line 39)] is hardly serendipitous.'4 The "wreaths of smoke" that issue from the forest cottages are Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone (Wordsworth, 1969: lines 17-21). This inspires no thought of harmony, but of continuing human solitude and defensiveness in the face of external nature. Thus, and this has been the cause for ovation and disdain, the romantics must turn to some kind of faith to support their feeble assertions of harmony.15 Hence Wordsworth invests in a "sense sublime" that lurks behind external phenomena, but is hardly supported by them: If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oftIn darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heartHow oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee (Wordsworth, 1969: lines 49-54). RomanticPolitics Rightly or wrongly, romanticists have been considered escapists, and thus any political analysis has been tainted by what is seen as a form of cowardice.16 More recently, however, Herbert Marcuse radically altered the romanticist reticence in an attempt to lend romanticism a political potency with which it had not been heretofore
credited. 17

In his earlier work, Marcuse looks forward to art "allied with the revolution" (Marcuse, 1962: 135). However, as his discussions of aesthetics mature (along with his disillusionment with revolutionary politics) in An Essayon Liberation, CounterrevoluMarcuse comes to support the political tion and Revolt,and The Aesthetic Dimension, potential 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 Rimbaud than in the didactic plays of Brecht" (Marcuse, 1978: xiii). For Marcuse, something happens to affirmative, romantic art when it occurs in an environment where there is a growing feeling that the dreamed-of harmony with external phenomena does not demand a spiritual haven for its protection, but that such harmony could be supported by the given levels of technology and social tells us that the soul and the PerformancePrinciple development. Erosand Civilization are most powerful when they repress revelations that cannot be feasibly implemented. In an argument reminiscent of Eros and Civilization, Marcuse, in The Aesthetic Dimension, hypothesizes that the explosive insights of aesthetic vision can no longer be arrested or transformedwithin trivializing compartments, because the belief as to the infeasibility of the revelations is quickly diminishing. Marcuse remains convinced

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that, in the present age, "history projects the image of a new world of liberation. Advanced capitalism has revealed real possibilities of liberation which surpass traditional concepts" (Marcuse, 1978: 27). Thus, Marcuse believes that the pressure of affirmative, romantic art in an environment that finds it harder to cloister its interest in harmony (a "pacified existence") will eventually emerge as a political force in the demand for and creation of a liberated environment. The connection of romantic art and politics is complicated, however, by the fact that the "beyondness" of romantic art makes it impossible for the artistic vocation to become instrumental or programmatic, and thus devolve to the ineffective "didacticism"of Brecht. Thus, as soon as Marcuse connects art and politics, he finds it necessary to maintain a distinction (Marcuse, 1972: 121-122). He asserts that the artist revolts, not to practice the artistic vocation, but to protect it. In TheAesthetic Marcuse speaks of the "presupposition" of revolution in the liberative Dimension, aesthetic activity: The autonomy of art contains the categoricalimperative:"things must on the becomesthematic; .. This does not mean that the revolution change". it doesnot. It seemsthatin these in the aesthetically mostperfect works, contrary, as the a priori of art (Marcuse, is presupposed, worksthe necessity of revolution 1978:13-14). By suggesting an "internal exigency" to art that "presupposes" political change, Marcuse seeks to escape the quandary of simultaneously supporting the political value of art and a type of art that is detached from politics. Critical Analysis The Political Paradox of 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: and profoundly Once againhe has had one of thosefortunate excitingideasthat all of us so manytimes.He intendsto havethesquares anddelighted haveshocked in honorof revolutionaries, with statuesand monuments of Moscowdecorated greatfightersof socialism.This denotesboth agitationfor socialismand a wide themselves talentsto manifest fieldforoursculptural [(Bowlt,1978:184)quoting (Grabar,1933:155)]. The plan was undertaken with fervor. The monuments to tsars and other reactionary elements were razed, to be replaced by "monuments intended to commemorate the great days of the Russian socialist revolution" (Bowlt, 1978: 185, quoting Izvestiya,14 April 1918). Unfortunately, the execution of the plan never fulfilled its optimistic objective. The result was two types of sculpture, both repugnant to Lenin. The first group may have contained the appropriate political intentions, but it was poorly executed and aesthetically offensive. Lenin was appalled at the lack of skill and inspiration that these statues demonstrated. The few from this group that actually survived the harsh Russian climate were later intentionally destroyed. The other type of statue was the more scarce variety of respected artists like Boris Korolev, Aleksandr Zlatovratsky,and Georgii Motovilov, who refusedto compromise their futurist commitment. So although their work was discussed favorably in art

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circles, Lenin and most of the working public felt that their interest in aesthetic political 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 of Bakunin was never removed from its wooden scaffolding, until the day the entire project was dismantled. Art of the audience seems to be confronted by a paradox that severely hampers its political efficacy. On the one hand, if it is too blatant and immediate in its distillation of desirable and undesirable social traits, it is timebound, dull, uninspirational, and superficial. This is hardly the place to articulate a definitive explication of the essence of 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, without particular indications, and that the writer is not obliged to obtrude on the reader the future historical solutions of the social conflicts pictured" (Marx and Engels, 1947: 45). The paradox is realized when realist art digresses from pure tendentiousness in order to partake in art's "special" qualities, for what is immediately sacrificed is the ability to control audience response with the desired specificity. Thus, Engels, Lukacs, Althusser, and other "realists" who isolate a "something special" about art run the risk of endangering their specific political goals to other, imaginative responses. Even Bertolt Brecht suffered the paradox of art of its audience. For it was the bourgeois class, not the proletariat, that, tired of the war and apprehensive about the future, flocked to productions like The Threepenny Opera. They left the theater not a bit less but seen themselves in a humorous to revolt, confused, inspired having light. Frustrated that his audience did not depart discussing the inherent gangsterism of capitalism as exemplified in the character of Macheath, Brecht decided later, in his blatantly didactic phase, to communicate his insights more straightforwardly. He went to court in an effort to change the movie script and, failing that, he wrote The Novel, in which Macheath trades his dashing underworld characteristics Threepenny for the mundane existence of a mercantilist. And Polly, deprived of her romantic attachment, marries Macheath only to relieve herself of the stigma of unwed motherhood. 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 his dismay, the novel reached a level of popularity comparable only to that of the Soviet monumental sculpture.

The Political Limitations of Art At Its Audience

The problem with art at its audience is that it is not nearly as radical as it appears or wants to be. Dismantling the status quo limits the artistic project as much as it frees 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 that which they hope to oppose. Distorting and rearranging borrowed images does not deny the fact that the images remain borrowed. In a sense, then, those whose artistic energy is derived from the perceived inadequacies and limitations of the given, are condemned to a similarly limiting dependency on those inadequacies: The central purpose of art and art criticism since the early 1960's has been the dismantling of the monolithic myth of modernism and the dissolution of its oppressive progression of great ideas and great masters . . .Pop art, for instance,

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ThePoliticalEffectsof Art on Audience deliberately accepted as its subject matter the low culture, tabloid images rejected disdainfully by modernism;similarly, minimalism exaggerated hyperbolicallythe formalist codes of late modernism, creating spare but "theatrical"works ... .This gradual shift or mutation in the rigidly structuredforms of modernist art has led not to another style, but to a fully transformed conception of art founded on alternate critical premises (Wallis, 1984: xiii).

It is difficult to accept the full transformation when it is so dependent on prior concepts. In fact, because of this dependency, it is not always clear whether the postmodernist artwork is really an enlightened critique, or just a very competent presentation of the forms which postmodernism opposes (thus the Warhol paradox). Thus, one often encounters elaborate explanations accompanying exhibits of art at its audience. Minimalist art-shows produce hardly minimalist brochures and catalogs, and the titles or accoutrements of postmodernist artworks take on an importance that sometimes seems greater than the works themselves. This need for words and explanations may be taking over the execution of art at its audience, with the result that, as in the case of The Threepenny Novel, little will remain for the artistic community. It is not surprising, then, that art critics are among some of the most avid supporters of art at its audience. Such artistic endeavors allow the critics to ply their analytical and verbal skills on a vast reservoir of seemingly relevant meaning. In fact, the critics (with good reason) begin to believe that they might even be more important than the art itself: The recognition that the critique of representationnecessarily takes as its object those types of cultural constructions with which art traditionally deals, suggests that 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 than how art can serve as a fruitfulrealm for critical and theoreticalactivity. This gives to art criticism a responsibility and a political potential it is often denied (Wallis, 1984: xvi). Because oppositional language is in the dictionary of the status quo, it is not radically 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," it was not long before all such concepts were commercialized and defused. Within months of the first reference to police officers as pigs, the first annual "pig bowls" were being played between rival departments. The concepts were intentionally misplaced by the given culture's opponents, but the concepts remained familiar, even comfortable. Art at its audience is negative without being negating, for it exists only because its target exists.

The Political Isolation of Art Above Its Audience

Supporters of Theodor Adorno, especially the American contingent, have assembled an impressive array of excuses that are activated on contact with Adorno's widely discussed 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 European ethnocentrism" (Jay, 1973: 186). Another possibility, however, is that a commitment to art above the audience is a commitment to a certain snobbishness. By placing so much emphasis on the need for 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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uninterested in the real world. It is difficult to expect the jazz audience, which clearly outnumbers that of Sch6nberg, to be attracted to Adorno's theories of untainted aesthetic alternatives when the jazz audience is described as: vague, inarticulate followers. ... As girls, they have trained themselves to faint upon 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 the status quo, and to invoke its own untainted system in the face of the given degeneration. Yet the method of provoking a valid political response may be attractive only to the social elements that Adorno wishes to displace. It is doubtful whether he could ever gain the support of the "girls" in the jazz audience, but quite possible that, although perhaps for the wrong reasons, he would appeal to the barbaric elite which he so despises. Thus, postmodernist critics hardly exaggerate when they depict a moral decline of modernism, where "radically individualist artists all 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 and Adorno, however, and that is that it is doomed to its own "formulization"-whereby the system becomes all important, and thus degenerates into infinite and unimportant permutations of the same alluring structure. Adorno himself noticed the quickness with which the twelve-tone scale sapped insight and imagination from its practitioners, finally advising against its utilization (Adorno, 1967: 166-167). This preoccupation with formula, with an intellectual and analytical commitment to counteract the easiness of the given barbarism, may be especially ineffectual in a society that itself has become so formulaic and analytical. In fact, the time may have come when pleasing, simple, and naturalistic depictions are the most provocative. The "organized vacuity" of the twelve-tone scale, intended to inspire a feeling of discomfort and "unnaturalness" in the listener, may now be as soothing as pastoral images once were. Not only is analytical art subject to formulization; it is subject to a pleasant identification. We may now exist in a time where a more human analysis can only be inspired by an inattention to systems and formulas: Marxist critics assume that the "natural attitude" to things is the enemy, for it implies a refusal to suspend our relations with them for the sake of an analysis of our attitude toward them. . . . But in a world overdetermined by analytic abstraction-artificial understandings of all kinds-which seem to have an "expressivity" of their own, the natural attitude toward things becomes a desirable if elusive goal, a critical factor for survival, and the only method for the recovery of concreteness and engagement (Kuspit, 1983: 45). The Political Impetuousity of Art Beyond Its Audience

More than fifteen years after writing The Birth of Tragedy,Friedrich Nietzsche reflected on his early work in "An Attempt at Self-Criticism." He retreated from his youthful suggestion that a certain kind of art, resembling art beyond its audience, might be able to "overleap" the disenchantment with an empty, terrifying existence. It would seem that Nietzsche anticipates Marcuse who, with the young Nietzsche, was anxious to draw the "fairest form" into existence by transcending the present "terrifying" one:

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ThePoliticalEffectsof Art on Audience wouldit not be necessary for the tragic man of such a culture, in view of his selfeducation for seriousness and terror, to desire tragedy as his own proper Helen, and to exclaim with Faust: Should notmylonging thedistance overleap Anddrawthefairestform intoexistence? "Would it not be necessary?"-No,thrice no! 0 you young romantics:it would not be necessary! But it is highly probable that it will end that way-namely, "comforted," as it is written, in spite of all self-education for seriousness and terror, "comfortedmetaphysically"-in sum, as romantics end, as Christians. comfort first (Nietzsche, 1968: 26) No! You ought to learn the art of this-worldly

For Marcuse, a liberated environment is one in which there is a coincidence of advanced technology and aesthetic vision. The technology is needed in order that the imagination need not be imprisoned in Wordsworth's dream world. The aesthetic vision is needed to stimulate thinking about a new, harmonious relationship with externality. Marcuse believes that a particular type of aesthetic practice represents and stimulates this attachment to harmony; I believe Marcuse's liberative aesthetics is closest to the romantic version, and I have labelled it art beyond its audience. Marcuse believes that in the right technological environment this type of aesthetic practice informs those involved in it that they had better make physical, material, and political efforts to control the purveyors of technology and domination, lest the aesthetic transcendence becomes the last victim to one-dimensionality. The aesthetes revolt not only in the knowledge that the imagination should not be repressed, but also in the knowledge that the fruits of the imagination may now be realized in the material world. Yet does this mean that the romantic vision can be trusted to aid in the realization of 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, it may have been true that Friedrich Schlegel and the German Romantics were admirers of Metternich, but "Metternich himself was no romantic" (Hauser, n.d.: v. 3, p. 175). Although an enhanced relationship with externality might be an appropriate political vision, it may be left to normal politicians, immune to the lure of romanticism, to protect and promote the visionaries. Kant discusses the sublime, a category of aesthetic stimuli that, despite intimidating awesomeness, is pleasing because we can bask in the accomplishments of subjectivity and morality. We receive sublime pleasure from a rushing waterfall because we have imposed a human meaning on nature despite its most intimidating manifestations. But in this capacity it is a might enabling us to assert our independenceas against the influence of nature, to degrade what is great in respect of the latter to the level of what is little, and thus to locate the absolutely great only in the proper estate of the Subject (Kant, 1964: 121). Of course, Marcuse does not retain Kant's aesthetic category of the sublime, for clearly, Marcuse's "improvement" of Kant rests on the assertion that all nature has inherent, rather than asserted purposiveness, and that individuals have no reason to maintain their fear of any aspect of nature. To Marcuse, nature is beautiful, not intimidating; in fact, nature's beauty has become so accessible that aesthetic form need no longer alter or repel sensual input for the sake of an orderly, harmonious,

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and receptive relationship to human existence. This beautification of nature, called sensual beauty by Kant, is distinguished from the sublime in terms of its effect on cognitive activity: sensual beauty, not surprisingly, puts the mind at ease (Kant, 1964: 125). Thus, the "beautification" of Kantian aesthetics, which follows necessarily from Marcuse'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 a supportive technological environment, but to qualities of the art itself.

Conclusion
I 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 its audience? I tend to think that is the case; yet at this late juncture, I can offer only heuristics, and do so without ever discussing the "essentials" of art, or politics. First of all, there is empirical evidence which questions the causal association of art to political change. Vytautus Kavolis's findings (Kavolis, 1972) on the artistic flowerings of seventeenth-century Holland, Renaissance Italy, and ancient Egypt and Assyria, along with my own investigation (Lukes, 1985: pp. 147-149) of fifth-century Athens, argue that proliferations of art tend to occur just after periods of great political and military upheaval. This suggests that art is better at facilitating change than at creating or resisting it. It seems that if art is to have a social significance it is as product and ameliorator of an atmosphere of daunting reconnections. And then there is the problem of predictable response. Hans Haacke, whose art may presently be closest to the art of its audience variety, still finds it necessary to include written explanations of his work, lest they be misinterpreted. ("A photograph without caption can be interpreted in many ways-the caption directs the interpretation" [quoted in Siegel, 1984: 112]). This, in fact, may help to explain the apparent connection between art and politics. Artists interested in pursuing political goals use their skill and respect as artists to attract an admiring audience, only then to impart unambiguous, non-artistic, political messages in some appropriate intermission. The art may be indirectly political, then, but not essentially so. This essay commenced with two possible ways of examining the relationship of art and its audience-either the political effect of the audience on art, or the political effect of art on its audience. At this point I believe that the former perspective may yield more edifying investigations than the latter.

Notes
1. Here is a good chance to promotea pair of essays I wrote that extractpoliticallessons fromMachiavelli's plays: (Lukes,1981)and (Lukes,1984). fortwo reasons.First,whenarranged for thematicconsistency 2. I chosetojettisontemporal forman interesting the fourartisticmovements continuum frommostto least thematically, with the audience.Secondly,this essay is not so much interestedin the "engagement" historical "causes" of the four movements,and thus can sacrificeprecise historical placement.For such a discussionsee (Jameson,1984). 3. Benjaminquotes his hero, BertoltBrecht:

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Tragedies and operas are being written all the time, apparently with a trusty stage apparatus at hand, whereas in reality they do nothing but supply an apparatuswhich is obsolete. 'This confusion among musicians, writers and critics about their situation,' says Brecht, 'has enormous consequences, which receive far too little attention. Believing themselves to be in possession of an apparatus which in reality possesses them, they defend an apparatus over which they no longer have control, which is no longer, as they still believe, a meansfor the producers but has become a means to be used againstthe producers' (Benjamin, 1977: 98). 4. "For the dialectical treatment of this problem [tendency versus quality]-and now I come to the heart of the matter-the rigid isolated object (work, novel, book) is of no use whatsoever. It must be inserted into the context of living social relations." (Benjamin, 1977: 87). 5. Even for Georg Lukacs, who admittedly supports a more "creativerealism" (Lukacs, 1977: 36), art can only draw out of an audience "thoughts and feelings," which perhaps dormant, predated the aesthetic extraction. Lukacs differswith Benjamin and Brecht only to the extent that he believes a certain kind of literature is unique in its ability to inspire an expanded vision of reality. Lukacs thus prefers the metaphor and linearity of Thomas Mann to the interruptednarrativesof Brecht. Of Mann, Lukacs says: "He knows thoughts and feelings grow out of the life of society and how experiences and emotions are parts of the total complex of reality. As a realist he assigns these parts to their rightfulplace within the total life context" (Lukacs, 1977: 36). 6. The "songs" were important parts of epic theater. Hans Eisler, who wrote many of them, insisted upon integrating lyrics into orchestral music, since music without words "gained its 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 look at the surface of my painting and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it" (Hughes, 1982: 7). 8. To get at Warhol's "semiotic practice," Crone found it necessary to "divide the pictorial analysis into three sections. . . 1. clothing, 2. gesture, and 3. hairstyles";(Crone, 1987:88). 9. Warhol's superficialityseems quite genuine in light of the recent publication of his diaries. Claiming to offer a deeper insight into Warhol's character, the diary's editor explained how she recorded his insights: "We'd warm up for a while just chatting-he was always curious about everything, he'd ask a million questions: 'What are you having for breakfast? Do you have Channel 7 on? How can I clean my can opener-should I do it with a toothbrush?'Then he'd give me his cash expenses and tell me all about the day and night before. Nothing was too insignificant for him to tell the Diary" (Warhol, 1989: xvii). 10. "The representational text of the grid however also precedes the surface, comes before it, preventing even that literal surfacefrom being anything like an origin" (Krauss, 1981:57). 11. "But from ourperspective, the one from which we see that the signifier cannot be reified; that its objecthood, its quiddity, is only a fiction; that every signifieris itself the transparent signified of an already-given decision to carve it out as the vehicle of a sign-from this perspective there is no opacity, but only a transparency that opens onto a dizzying fall into a bottomless system of reduplication" (Krauss, 1981: 57). 12. It would be much more difficult to attempt a schematic presentationof Greenberg'sideas regardingart and politics, given the embryonicand ever-changingnature of his comments. Like so many other leftists of the time, Greenbergbecame a staunch anti-communistafter the war. At that time, perhaps in order to rationalize his simultaneous attraction to modernism and conservatism, Greenberg refused to admit any political relevance to modernist art. See Cox, 1982: 141-157. for rejecting 13. Adorno praises the later works of Beethoven, especially his Missa Solemnis, "the illusory appearance of the unity of subjective and objective" (Adorno, 1976: 123). 14. Thus the darker side of romanticism, which might include Goya's "Saturn Devouring his Children," 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 proof really necessary in light of statements such as: "The aesthetic form in art has the aesthetic form 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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BiographicalNote TIMOTHYJ. LUKES is Associate Professor of Political Science at Santa Clara University. He wrote much of this essay while serving as a visiting professor at Loyola University Rome Center of Liberal Arts. His most recent book is, AmericanPolitics in a Changing World, published in 1990 by Brooks/Cole. ADDRESS:Department of Political Science, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053, USA. Professors Brigid Barton, John Bokina, and Eric Hanson provided Acknowledgment. valuable expertise and advice.