Introduction

A major issue in the relation of art to the rest of society is the question of how those who do art can act in ways that become politically consequential, and how making art thus shapes politics. For art scholars, art historians, and social scientists, this has been primarily understood as a question of signification and explicit content: how political meaning is conveyed through artistic media. Scholars and practitioners alike, when they speak of politics and art, tend to focus on the political message conveyed by artistic products and artworks. Some instances of this tendency include Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People and the French anthem “La Marseillaise”; both connote nationalism and freedom. Picasso’s artwork Guernica and Country Joe’s song “Fixin’ to Die Rag” both highlight the absurdity and suffering of war, albeit from different points on the high/low art scale. This approach to the politicization of art is sometimes linked to the expression of aesthetic judgment-whether politics necessarily pollutes and debases the quality of the arts.