Art and Politics

Abstract

The author explores the relationship between art and politics from a historical perspective. His starting point is the appearance of the notion of the artistic avant-garde in the 1820s. He argues that the political role of art emerged together with the emergence of the modern state, and especially in relation to the French Revolution and its politicized artistic representations. In the author’s view, the debates concerning art and politics have drastically changed in the last few decades. Nonetheless, the basic “aesthetic dimension” of art is still one of its main determining features, even if it is designated within a different historical and theoretical framework.