Important though it is, earthly beauty does not trump all other values. Moreover, it serves no purpose to assert that all political art is bad ex hypothesi. It is perfectly possible to make great art that serves as the instrument of an exterior purpose. That is why Chartres Cathedral was built and the St. Matthew Passion composed.

But making reality over into art, while it necessarily entails a measure of simplification, also demands that the artist simultaneously acknowledge the proliferating complexity of human nature and experience. Therein lies the problem of political art: The artist whose chief goal is to enlist his audience in a cause, no matter what that cause may be, is rarely prepared to tell the whole truth and nothing but. He replaces the true complexity of the real world with the false simplicity of the ideologue. He alters reality not to make everything more beautiful, but to stack the deck.

The greatest artists seek not to change the world, but to see it as it is, then show it to their fellow men with the transforming clarity that is beauty, thereby heightening our perception and enriching our understanding.

The Confessions of an Aesthete -Commentary