Only in the last hundred years or so has it become necessary for the artist to become an intellectual, for some concept or ideology to undergird the work and for the artist or composer to have to articulate a relationship between the work and a concept. Artistic politics became necessary; artists are now part of the professional caste: trained from an early age to create on a conceptual basis. As a result, the craftsperson is totally disqualified from the title of artist.
The miraculous precision of a great work of art is lost when it has to declare itself at the border, at the customs desk, of modern communication. Art cannot awaken the mind when it has to use the mind's rote ideologies; art cannot perform its purpose, which is to enrich our understanding of reality, because it is already reduced to our common understanding of reality.1