At various points various political movements have tried to direct art consciously or claim a certain kind of art as theirs, and all that will ever give you is obviously bad art.

I am not sure about this statement: I find quite a lot of protest art both politically effective and artistically enjoyable and I'm even fond of art created for political reasons other than protest (funded by the WPA, for example) and I don't believe this is a controversial point of view, which makes me think you are saying something different. Could I ask you to clarify?