“The Political Content of Art” was the subject of a symposium held recently at the School of Visual Arts in New York. The participants were Marshall Berman, professor of political science at the City University of New York and author of All That Is Solid Melts Into Air; Craig Owens, an editor at Art in America; and the artists Eric Fischl, Jenny Holzer, and Lucio Pozzi, who acted as moderator. The large audience was composed mostly of students from the School for the Visual Arts, who are presumably serious about preparing themselves for a career in the art world. At the very least they must have found the evening something of a puzzle.

After introducing the panel, Mr. Pozzi offered his own views on the topic at hand. He said that the contemporary New York artist is squeezed between the “bureaucracy of the right” and the “bureaucracy of the left.” One specializes in “manipulation and publicity,” the other in “doctrinaire demagoguery.” Unfortunately, he declined to say which specialty belonged to which bureaucracy. One wondered whether Mr. Pozzi might better have described his dilemma without using the terms “right” and “left,” whether in fact his remarks had anything to do with politics at all. He concluded by saying that as an artist in contemporary society he had chosen to elude the political vice-grip as best he could. He was “helpless, but free,” and determined to spend his days “regenerating [his] own imagination.”

Marshall Berman began his