POLITICS OF ART AND POLITICAL ART: ON CRITICISM OF POWER AND AESTHETIC AUTONOMY

The conversion of art into an ideological platform can be a fad that sacrifices the autonomy of art to new forms of meaningless heteronomy. In this way, criticism and resistance become rhetoric and dependence, such as the integration of the most rebellious art in the great centers and events at the service of the cultural industry and tourism, and in speculative collecting. The aesthetic rebellion has become in many cases an imposture perfectly integrated into the society of the show, including a kitsch art that parodies the creative transgression. In this article I will review some examples of the two most antagonistic attitudes: the conversion of art into political activism with Joseph Beuys, body-art, and Ai Weiwei and current Chinese art; in the opposite pole, the integrated transgression of Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and the commercial firm Benetton.