The social perception of the value of a work of art

"Art is fatally threatened by a society that is only enthusiastic about it in the auction room, and whose abstract logic strips the world of its sensible quality."

Terry eagleton

The avant-garde, or "Avant-garde art", emerged at the beginning of the last century, was nourished by the rejection and criticism of traditions with the purpose of transcending its historical time in a new creation. This art, revolutionary and groundbreaking, typical of modernity and, therefore, akin to turbulent times in which everything was possible, contrasts with current fashion, or "Postmodern art".

The transition from avant-garde art to postmodern art apparently preserved a dissident attitude, but always in line with his introduction to the circuit of daily consumption. Converted into a whole subculture, now the critical is nothing but a fashion or way of life in which the rebellious attitude he finds no discrepancy with the false fullness of a joyful life that preserves the established order of things.

The fact that postmodern art does not aspire to overcome society does not mean 

that the conventions of the established order are sufficient for its production, since it rather operates by creating a lack in society that it intends to supply through its creation. It is not about denying society as a holistic whole, but rather opening gaps in it, material or spiritual needs that must be addressed through the new work.

But looking back in order to establish a certain comparison with current artistic development, it can be said that, despite having a vocation for social utopia, avant-garde art tended to become an intimate creation, carried out for Y in order to the author himself. On the contrary, postmodern art, lacking any social commitment, is stripped of any idealistic will that transcends the established order of things, is a creation in continuous projection to the Exterior: it only makes sense when it is diffused and consumed.

This is explained by the fact that artistic creation, arrogated by the industrial designers and advertising agencies, is no longer in the hands of virtuosos for whom the mass production of the work of art would have invalidated the artistic condition itself: each work, if it is to be considered as art, should be unique and only. Pay attention to the consideration for which art is associated with the sublime, and this with the exceptional.

The popular art into which fashion becomes, with the pop art as an exponent, he left us cans of soup (Campbell’s) even in the soup. In fact, screen printing is a technique whose main characteristic is the reproductive viability. In the same way, fashion, in its broad sense, refers to those repetitive tendencies, whether in dressing, consuming or, ultimately, behaving.

A) Yes, Although the avant-garde was part of "high culture", a reason for distinction, fashion as an epiphenomenon of "mass culture" homogeneous by nature, losing the abstraction that art could request during the avant-gardes and becoming a product of the most mundane and secular: art passed from the temples, in allusion to museums or theaters in which acts of worship were carried out, to the television screen, in which each commercial is in itself a whole creation.

It is true that fashion as such does not constitute a new type of art., unlike the avant-gardes that were artistic movements typical of a certain period. To tell the truth, fashion is an allusion to customs, not limited to the artistic field, that mark some time or place specific, so we can affirm that fashion was something, no longer contemporary to the avant-garde, but much prior to they.

It happens, however, that nowadays all art is fashion. In the artistic field, the influence of postmodernity means that trends are not similar to the mode of development of the previous avant-gardes in which there was a progressive development in tune with a socially and technologically revolutionary century, since today fashion trends are, on many occasions, regressive.

Tracing the past to regain his attributes, as well as probing the future to anticipate their epithets, fashion establishes a fickle and irresolute present that is known to date from expiration: unlike avant-garde art, claimed as the spearhead of a sociopolitical process that led, current art is conceived to fade, since only by creating transitory and perishable trends does it fulfill the purpose of creating consumption peaks at each new appearance.

In other words, the short cycle of fashion requires instant and mass sales of articles for short and intensive use so that the novel happens at the same time. kitsch knowing that sooner or later it will become kitsch. And taking the economic return by substance, current artistic trends are partial and not ecumenical., since they intend to find market niches to occupy, to later reinvent themselves.

In view of this it is evident that, while avant-garde art is that of minorities who aspire to reach the majority, fashion art is that of majorities who aspire to become minorities. And having no motivations, fashion looks for influences here or there, what does it matter: how can postmodern art accompany the society if it is essentially skeptical of the existence of an objective reality and, consequently, of the possibility of transform it.

And since postmodernity not only does not provide, but denies, judgments about the elements qualitative, necessary to define the social reality but also the reality of the artistic work under criteria of good or bad, pretty or ugly, everything that which remains as the guiding principle is the amount. The principle by which the more people the art reaches (the more it is sold) the better it will be, makes such art an eminently art trivial. Such is the condition of mass or popular art.The work that used to be claimed, on some occasions, as an anti-art, today takes the form of any landmark conceived for (and assimilated by) the artistic market.

In any case,The psychological process by which the landmark comes to be conceived as a work of art is that the piece lacks a value by itself and is always subject to a factor external to its reality, such as, for example, the price that the author reaches based on highly questionable conventions. In this way, just as advertising does not sell the bar of soap but the idea of ​​beauty, contemporary art is prone to offer itself as an interface to an object, or even experience, essentially symbolic.

But an art that, although it is considered subjective and open to all kinds of interpretation, requires external recognition is in itself contradictory.. The current work of art can also be considered a motley of images, sounds and words present in any area of ​​our daily lives. In this case, the work would be everything and, in turn, it would be nothing (performance is that work that, resisting to enter the commercial circuit through which exchange value circulates, it is ephemeral by its own idiosyncrasy).

It seems that the avant-garde was strangled by the plastic rings of the soft drink cans and his body was buried under liters and liters of paint. that, superimposing one color on another, came to form a burial mound that engendered the new work of art, born directly from the ground and not from the flowers that grow from he. Perhaps the ultimate purpose of art is nothing more than its lack of purpose, for which, as a silent critique of instrumental rationality and market values, it acquires as its purpose in gagé the autonomy of value, reverse of capitalist utility.