Look for Arnold Hauser's "A Social History of Art" (4 vols.), which I think has been reprinted recently. Also, there was a good anthology called "Marxism and Art" edited by Maynard Solomon published by Vintage in the 1970s, now out of print, I believe. Lee Baxandall also edited one or more anthologies on Marxism & art.
K. Mickey
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This is just a second on Hauser. Most of these are available used through [http://www.alibris.com], an on-line used book seller. And of course there is the library.
Hauser developed, what I consider the best version of a Marxist approach to the social production of art. He is old and all his works date from the fifties and sixties. In the next generation, there is Tim Clark who is also very good. Clark focused almost exclusively on France during the 1848 and 1871 revolutions. There is one other work of Clark's, on Jackson Pollack, but it was published in German. From a lecture I went to two years ago, Clark is currently working at developing some kind of synthesis of a postmodern and Marxist approach to the New York School--the Abstract Expressionists.
In my limited experience of looking and reading, progressive and Marxist social and political theory does a terrible job with art and the production of art. Hauser and Clark are as good as it gets--don't get me wrong, they are very good, but they are only two historians I can think of at the moment. Maybe Adorno on Musicology--but I haven't read it so I can't say.
I also want to mention Andre Malraux and Octavio Paz with a certain provision that both were Marxists at some point in their lives and the remains are laced through their works. So, with a little tweaking you can tease out a more explicit Marxist view from much of what they have written.
And, don't forget the artists and writers themselves who probably do the best job: Courbet, Baudelaire, Zola, Groz, Beckman, Kalowitz, Orozco, Breckt, David Smith, just to mention a random few.
Chuck Grimes ---------------------------------
Clark, T. J.. The absolute bourgeois: artists and politics in France, 1848-1851, [by] T. J. Clark. London, Thames and Hudson, 1973. 224 p. illus. (some col.), facsims. 25 cm. #4.50
Clark, T. J.. Image of the people : Gustave Courbet and the 1848
Revolution /, T.J. Clark ; with 50 illustrations, 7 in colour. London
: Thames and Hudson, c1973. 208 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.
Clark, T. J.. The painting of modern life : Paris in the art of Manet and his followers /, T.J. Clark. 1st ed. New York : Knopf, 1985, c1984. xv, 338 p., [31] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 24 cm.
Hauser, Arnold, 1892-1978. Manierismus. English. Mannerism : the crisis of the Renaissance and the origin of modern art, Arnold Hauser ; [translated in collaboration with the author by Eric Mosbacher]. Cambridge Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986, c1965. xx, 426 p., [228] p. of plates : ill. ; 27 cm.
Hauser, Arnold, 1892-1978. Soziologie der Kunst. English. The sociology of art /, Arnold Hauser ; translated by Kenneth J. Northcott. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1982. xxi, 776 p. ; 24 cm.
Hauser, Arnold, 1892-1978. The social history of art, Translated in collaboration with the author by Stanley Godman. New York : Vintage Books, [1951] 4 v. ; 19 cm. Series title: A Vintage book, V-114, V-115, V-116, V-117
Hauser, Arnold, 1892-1978. The philosophy of art history, Arnold Hauser. London : Routledge & K. Paul, 1959, c1958. x, 428 p. ; 22 cm.