(Communism responds with) Politicization of art

Abstract

In the present essay I propose a reading of the expression “politicizing
art” used by Walter Benjamin in the last line of his aesthetic theory, the essay
The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. I try to contain the reading of
this expression in the unit of the fragment, the epilogue of the essay quoted,
then proceed to another essay, in which Benjamin is concerned with poetics:
The author as a producer. “Politicize art” is not an ideological tendency to convey
in the works, but means to pay attention to the conditions of its production,
so that the work of art is no longer any product, appropriated by capitalism,
flattered with praise of the artist’s unique genius, but a technical tool for
everyone.