[microsound] a good quote -- maybe worthy of discussion?

[Kim Cascone <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

from English Marxist Christopher Caudwell's essay 'The Concept of  
Freedom':

     'But art is in any case not a relation to a thing, it is a  
relation between men, between artist and audience, and the art work  
is only like a machine which they must both grasp as part of the  
process. The commercialisation of art may revolt the sincere artist,  
but the tragedy is that he revolts against it still within the  
limitations of bourgeois culture. He attempts to forget the market  
completely and concentrate on his relation to the art work, which now  
becomes further hypostatized as an entity-in-itself. Because the art  
work is now completely an end-in-itself, and even the market is  
forgotten, the art process becomes an extremely individualistic  
relation. The social values inherent in the art form, such as syntax,  
tradition, rules, technique, form, accepted tonal scale, now seem to  
have little value, for the art work more and more exists for the  
individial alone.'