An analysis of political art could follow several directions – directions dictated by movements within political theory. One tradition within this theory defines politics as power struggle; another examines the administrative aspects of politics, like statehood, democracy, etc.; a third separates politics from power or administration, by emphasizing various forms of emancipation. Opposed to the idea of politics as struggle for power and privileges, political emancipation proposes instead the struggle for equality: equal political rights and equal recognition. Emancipation also means personal self-realization, and its study and promotion is closely linked to psychological and pedagogical traditions.
I see this third alternative as the most productive starting point for an investigation of the political within art and artistic work. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, because the nature of artistic practice is itself emancipatory. Within modernity, this emancipatory goal was projected onto the figure of individual artist and his subjective, individual expressions, and onto the notion of the applied arts as a means to alter or improve the world.