Art, Politicisation and Public Action

Cultural public action has progressively embraced two very different concepts of Art and culture: one universalist and linking innovation to democratisation; the other, differentialist and relativist, advocating a non–hierarchisable plurality of artistic forms. What happens to these differences within cultural public action and politicisation of the artistic sphere? One of the main aporias of cultural policy is the gap between the artist as an innovator and the general public, which can be seen from both demand (a function of democratisation), and supply (a function of support for creation) sides. This gap has been defended in a pessimistic, aristocratic fashion (‘Baudelarian Modernity’), and through politico-aesthetical rationalisation (avant–garde in nature). Yet in both cases, it raises the question of the gap between the dynamics of creation and of consumption — a gap that highlights the constant paradoxes that arise from supposing a direct relationship between artistic innovation on the one hand, and socio-political emancipation and progress on the other. Ironically, it is the upper classes that lend the greatest support for artistic daring. For both ideological and political reasons, most of the avant-garde movement was ranged against the bourgeoisie. The duality of the value of originality in Art (the aristocratic heroism of the innovator versus the democratic individualism of the expressive artist) point to two differing standpoints in the politicisation of art. This duality offers two answers, which are now superimposed on this paradox