Tuesday Otium: Art can make conscious the necessity of change, only when it obeys its own law as against that of reality.

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Advanced capitalism constitutes class society as a universe administered by a corrupt and heavily armed monopolistic class. To a large extent this totality also includes the socially coordinated needs and interests of the working class. If it is at all meaningful to speak of a mass base for art in capitalist society, this would refer only to pop art and best sellers. In the present, the subject to which authentic art appeals is socially anonymous; it does not coincide with the potential subject of revolutionary practice. And the more the exploited classes, “the people,” succumb to the powers that be, the more will art be estranged from “the people.” Art can preserve its truth, it can make conscious the necessity of change, only when it obeys its own law as against that of reality. Brecht, not exactly a partisan of the autonomy of art, writes: “A work which does not exhibit its sovereignty vis à vis reality and which does not bestow sovereignty upon the public vis à vis reality is not a work of art.”

Herbert Marcuse
The Aesthetic Dimension: 
Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics
(1977)

Édouard Manet
Music in the Tuileries Gardens 
(1862)