As one of the curators of the War and Empire show at the Meridian Gallery, part of the nationwide Art of Democracy coalition organized by Art Hazelwood and Stephen Fredericks, I was pleased to read Kenneth Baker’s article praising Scott Anderson’s drawing, “Moral Clarity Meets Moral Authority.” It is, indeed, a powerful work, both timely and timeless. However, readers should know that this and the other AOD shows feature scores of works equally worth viewing. The current political/economic crisis proves that our sixty-year-old bias against political art is shortsighted. Two quotations:

“The materialism of the middle class and the inertness of the working class leave the modern artist without any vital connection to society, save...the strictly esthetic... So long as modern society is dominated by the love of property ... the artist has no alternative to formalism.”
—Robert Motherwell, 1944

“...If either art or society is to survive the coming half-century, it will be necessary for us to reassess our values. The time is past due for us to decide whether we are a moral people or merely a comfortable people, ... whether we place the sanctity of enterprise above the debasement of our public. If it falls to the lot of artists and poets to ask these questions, then the more honorable their role.”
—Ben Shahn, 1951.

Naturally, formalist art-for-art’s-sake is fine. But so is art, like Guston’s during and after the Vietnam war, made under the conviction that “adjusting a red to a blue” during grave crises is absurd.

DeWitt Cheng