Art as a Commodity

'Capitalist production is hostile to certain branches of intellectual labour, for instance, poetry and art'. As sciece becomes a productive force, so art becomes a commodity. This commodity is an article of consumption, which differs from other commdities in that its value is determined by adventitious factors, such as changes of fashion and fincial speculation on the part of wealthyart collectors and entrepreneurs.
The freedom of the artist in capitalist society is the freedom of the market.
                                                                                                -George Thomson

Art is almost as old as man. It is a form of work,and work is an activity peculiar to mankind. Marx defined work in these words:
The labour process is...purposive activity...for the fitting of natural substances to human wants; it is the general condition requisite for effecting an exchange of matter between man and nature; it is the condition perennially imposed by nature upon human life, and is therefore independent of the forms of social life- or, rather, it is common to all social forms.

Scientific and Artistic Creation

The scientist and the artist are both concerned to change the world - the one the external world of man's objective relations with nature, the other the internal world of his subjective relations with his fellow-men. The scientist discovers a contradiction in his consciousness of the external world and resolves it in a scientific hypothesis; the artist discovers a a contradiction in his consciousness of the internal world and resolves it in a work of art. Both are creative acts. The scientist extends our knowledge and hence also our control of nature; the artist heightens our social awareness and so advances the class struggle.

This does not mean that the two are independent of one another. The two worlds in which they do their special work are inseparable aspects of the social world in which they live and work together. Moreover, even in their special work the scientist cannot escape from the subject nor the artist from the object.

                                                                   -George Thomson

विज्ञान और कला

कहा जाता है कि विज्ञान के लिए मस्तिष्क और तर्क की दरकार होती है, और रचनात्मक कार्य के लिए कल्पना की. ...यह एक प्रत्यक्ष ग़लतफ़हमी है. लोग यह तो देखते हैं की कला और विज्ञान एक जैसी चीज़ नहीं है, लेकिन यह नहीं देखते कि भेद उन विषय सामग्री का कतई नहीं है, बल्कि मात्र उस ढंग में है जिसे वे उसे पेश करने के लिए अपनाते हैं. दार्शनिक युक्तियों में बात करता है, कवि छवियों और चित्रों में , लेकिन दोनों कहते एक ही चीज़ हैं.
                                                                                                                -बेलिंस्की

कला का मूल उद्देश्य

कला का मूल उद्देश्य जीवन में मानव की दिलचस्पी की हर चीज़ को पुनः मूर्त करना है. बहुधा जीवन का स्पष्टीकरण और उसकी परिणतियों का गुण-दोष-विवेचन भी काव्यात्मक कृतियों में प्रमुख स्थान ग्रहण कर लेता है. कला का जीवन के साथ सम्बन्ध वैसा ही होता है जैसा कि  इतिहास का. उनकी विषयवस्तु में अंतर केवल इतना ही होता है की इतिहास जहाँ सामाजिक जीवन का वर्णन करता है, वहां कला व्यक्तिगत जीवन का चित्रण करती है. इतिहास जहाँ मानवजाति से सम्बंधित है, वहां कला किसी एक मानव के जीवन को अपनाकर चलती है.(जोर हमारा)
                                                                                                           -चेर्नीशेव्स्की

The Function of Art

In order to be an artist it is necessary to seize, hold, and transform experience into memory, memory into expression, material into form. Emotion for an artist is not everything; he must also know his trade and enjoy it, understand all the rules, skills, forms, and conventions whereby nature - the shrew - can be tamed and subjected to the contract of art. The passion that consumes the dilettante serves the true artist: the artist is not mauled by the beast, he tames it.
                                                                                              - Ernst Fischer

The Origins Of Art

Man became man through tools. He made, or produced, himself by making or producing tools. The question of which came first - man or tool - is therefore purely academic. There was no tool without man and no man without tool; they came into being simultaneously and are indissolubly linked to one another. A relatively highly developed living organism became man by working with natural objects. By being put to such use, the objects became tools.