Where Is This Generation’s “Guernica”?

Among artists and intellectuals onstage at last weekend’s New Yorker Festival, “questions were repeatedly raised about the political potential of art and the role of intellectuals to be socially responsible. There was an urgency to the question that reflected the reality of time and place, of a presidential election four weeks away and of the inescapable reminders of Sept. 11.” But the answers remained debatable.