If pressed on the subject of the political significance of certain types of art, philosopher Herbert Marcuse often recounted an anectode that pleased him a great deal. It was about the painter Victor Neep, who, when challenged to explain the alleged protest of Cezanne's A Still Life With Apples, responded, "It is a pro… Read more

If pressed on the subject of the political significance of certain types of art, philosopher Herbert Marcuse often recounted an anectode that pleased him a great deal. It was about the painter Victor Neep, who, when challenged to explain the alleged protest of Cezanne's A Still Life With Apples, responded, "It is a protest against sloppy thinking". In the 1970's, when the cultural world of America was in constant upheaval and many intellectuals were humanists, modernists, and Marxist-Leninists all at once, I was a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, where I was fortunate enough to work closely with Hannes Ottahal. In what was then a truly pastoral environment, we often took long walks and debated issues: the viability of the women's movement, "repressive desublimation", and the role of intellectuals and students in prerevolutionary context. But the most contested topic of discussion by far was the relationship of art to social change.