Two Modes of Understanding Art

Abstract

Marx's thoughts on art are well known. Or are they? To be sure it is commonly enough believed that Marx showed us that there is an obvious correlation or direct communicatio between development of the productive forces of society and development in the arts and hence that artistic activity is reducible to economic productive behaviour. On the basis of this it is also believe that Marx claimed that there is a direct connection between the economic structure of capitalism with its direct ideological effects (e.g. alienated labour, commodity fetishism, illusions of equality and freedom, inversion of subject/object etc) on the one hand and works of art on the other.