Since the beginning of modern times, artists have embraced art as a vehicle for social change. Modern art often has been used as an instrument of critique against the injustices of the status quo. Yet it also can be a valuable commodity to the same establishment art seeks to fight. With the increasing appropriation of radicalism by market forces -- particularly since the 1980s -- the avant-garde and its political program for emancipation has been caught in a dead end. Today the idea of art's power to change things has lost most of its credibility. And the narrower the gap between art and stock value becomes, the greater the... More >>>