"I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic."

- J.G. Ballard.

Source: Adbusters.org. Downloaded [2010-11-17] from http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/aesthetics-of-activism.html

"It was not precisely as an artist, but rather with a man of the world with whom I had to do. I ask you to understand the word artist in a very restricted sense, a man of the world in a very broad one. By the second i mean a man of the whole world, a man who understands the world and the mysterious and lawful reasons for all its uses; by the first, a specialist, a man wedded to his palette like the serf to the soil. Monsieur G. does not like to be called an artist. Is he not perhaps a little right? His interests is the whole world; he wants to know, understand and appreciate everything that happens on the surface of our globe. The artist lives very little, if at all, in the world of morals and politics. If he lives in the Bréda district, he will be unaware of what is going on in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. (...) the majority of artists are no more than highly skilled animals, pure artisans, village intellects, cottage brains. Their conversation, which is necessarily limited to the narrowest of circles, becomes very quickly unbearable to the man of the world, to the spiritual citizen of the universe."

- Charles Baudelaire, writing in favour of "Monsieur C.G" (Constantin Guys, 1802-92)

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: III - The Artist, Man of the World, Man of the Crowd, and Child. London: Phaidon Press. p.6-7. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"The September 11 attacks were the greatest work of art in the cosmos...compared to that, we composers are nothing"

- Karlheinz Stockhausen

"Communism responds by politicizing art"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

"Mechanical reproduction emancipated the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. (...) But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

"Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual - first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the 'authentic' work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of l'art pour l'art, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of 'pure' art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter... An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipated the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an even greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.