The preservation of artistic freedom is one of the pillar stones of cultural policy in liberal democracies. This concern for artistic freedom is, however, traversed by contradictions. It seems impossible to support without influencing. By analysing documents from the history of Swedish cultural policy and the history of the avant-garde, this paper aims to abstract the logic that makes this paradoxical preservation of artistic freedom reasonable. In doing so, I propose a new historical context for the understanding of cultural policy. While the concern for artistic freedom has often been interpreted as a continuation of modern aesthetic thought, I demonstrate that it reveals an anti-aesthetic feature of cultural policy. This feature can be understood in terms of an identification of art with culture. The new context calls for a reconsideration of the place of the aesthetic judgement in cultural policy and of the relationship between cultu- ral policy and democracy.