In the first third or so of the convulsive twentieth century, art found much of its sustenance in opposition to the bourgeois order and its artistic institutions. The weakness of art in the past several decades stems, in the broadest sense, from the fact that Stalinism undermined the socialist workers movement and the culture of principled opposition which it fostered, while the decline of capitalist society made a serious rebirth of art and intellectual life dependent on a world view informed by anti-capitalist opposition and struggle. This hollowed out notion of an avant-garde has helped produce an insular, cynical and socially indifferent atmosphere in many artistic circles. The development of art, which, in turn, has such a bearing on the development of society, demands a conscious turn to questions of history and social life by an entire layer of artists and intellectuals. This is not an imposed or arbitrary demand, it is a most elemental and pressing fact of contemporary life.
Art is one of the means at our disposal for cognizing reality.
There is no absolute barrier between art and science. Without an infusion of objective understanding as to how human society has reached its present state, and therefore a conception of what might be done to fundamentally change things for the better, art will not advance. Art is about essential human problems, including centrally the problem of freedom from oppression and exploitation, although art has its own means of approaching these questions. How absurd and self-defeating it would be to argue that artists should or can continue to grope blindly, trusting to accident or mere intuition. The WSWS invites your comments.