Triumph of the Aesthetic

Maleuvre, Didier

doi:10.1057/978-1-349-94869-7_11

Didier Maleuvre²

334 Accesses

Abstract

Europe and North America from modernism to the contemporary period.

Modernism means the triumph of the aesthetic as an ideology: the domination, and total reshaping, of nature by science and technology. Modernism regards the world as a work of art: it therefore marches in step with the bureaucratic rationalization of society. Modernism invites us to become technicians of culture and minimalist art glamorizes the technocracy. Contemporary art as a mirror of the way people and ideas interact in the free market. Finally postmodern and contemporary art are harbingers of an illiberal re-aristocratization, or de-cififying, of western societies. When they are not a resolve to be ineffective, its so-called ironic and subversive strategies collude with the interests of the new patriciate. Under the control of big money, art today is middle-class modernism in the employ of neo-aristocratic anti-modernism. A melancholy, then finally optimistic coda.

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Notes

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Department of French and Italian, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Didier Maleuvre

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Maleuvre, D. (2016). Triumph of the Aesthetic. In: The Art of Civilization. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94869-7_11

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94869-7_11
Published: 12 June 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-94868-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-94869-7
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