Disciplining the consumer

The pertinent question of what is an artwork has become impossible to answer. If the institution of art could incorporate Duchamp's fountain and other ready-mades, we are left wondering where the artwork can be found if it obviously is not identical to the object displayed. I would loosely follow Kant's line of reasoning and claim that art is a mode of perception, a use of the senses that is not immediately instrumental. If we look at an object for immediately practical reasons (if we would see the Fountain in its original context and our only interest would be to piss in it), we are not contemplating it aesthetically, yet when we use our senses for their own sake (contemplating the form of the Fountain and applying criteria of beauty), we have moved to the realm of aesthetic contemplation. The importance of the Fountain is that it is not aesthetic, it rather reflects on the disciplining function of the institution, which would have us find beauty in a completely banal object.

At this point you will probably object that my conceptualizations is almost all-encompassing. Every existing object can become the object of aesthetic contemplation, therefore it would seem that I have made no place for artistic creation. Art is something that spontaneously springs up everywhere. This is where the institution art comes into play. I understand the institution to encompass didactic forms (the most obvious example would be academies, but it encompasses all forms of transmission of artistic skill), critical forms (modes of valuation, most obviously art criticism) and forms of presentation and reception (like galleries, concerts, theatre performances etc.). Following my initial conceptualization of aesthetics, one of the main functions of the institution art is to discipline the audience, that is train them to contemplate certain objects, created by artists and presented in special institutions, aesthetically. This has enabled artistic creation to achieve a much higher degree of sophistication than it could in the raw form. Surely more aesthetic delight can be derived from viewing Rubens' painting Daniel in the lion's den than from naively - that is with a view that has not been trained for aesthetic contemplation - viewing any natural object.

From this follows the hypocritical nature of the apology of the culture industry: that it is giving consumers what they apparently want, since they are buying the stuff. The culture industry as a specific form of institutionalisation of art also disciplines its consumers. It does not cater to pre-existing tastes, but can not exist if it is not proactive in forming them. Resistance to the culture industry is not to be found in individualised forms of "reading" that can - so cultural studies teach us - be "oppositional". Resistance can only be organised as a social infrastructure of resistance, as an aesthetic public sphere that enables individuals to collectively critically assess the products of the culture industry.