This is me speaking as an artist. If I'm a producer/propagandist who wants to hire an artist, then yes, the politics is the true purpose and the art "merely" needs to be able to cut.

But from inside the visual-art-algorithm, the "art" is so central to the utility function that speaking in terms of "the art is merely there for the purpose of politics" means you're probably going to fail.

That's more-or-less the point I was getting at. Namely: focusing all your effort on maximizing your utility function, causes you to fail to maximize your utility function.