So what?

The questions that arise are: Has the consumer got the right and duty to make direct demands on the artist, and to make individual and collective criticisms? Should art serve society? Does art composed purely for the personal soul-purging of the artist serve any useful purpose? And, finally, is there any effective means in a capitalist society by which the conscious customer can impress his views on the artist?

For it is certain that our present social system does not encourage social thinking about art. What is termed popular and what is apparently sophisticated are so only by conditioning of the audience. Without choice, the long-hairs talk lengthily about one parcel of degeneracy; the unshaven look glumly on at another. Both pay their money,—but whether or not the customer is always right, or what he really thinks (if he was encouraged to think—is quite outside the cares of the culture-kings. For our way of life has strange values. They are based, not on human minds and souls, but on hard, dirty dollars.

—N.G.