The Work of Art in the Epoch of Hegemony of Commodities

Abstract

The hegemony of the aesthetic dimension of the work of art was established as a decisive institutionalised element of the autonomy of art. The process of aestheticisation of everyday life, quite on the contrary, aimed at investing each and every produced object with beauty and meaning. Nevertheless, when we speak today about the aestheticisation we have in mind the aesthetic value of commodities, and the aesthetic dimension of consumer culture. In the paper two theses are highlighted. First, that aestheticisation of commodities and the commodification of the work of art were the decisive reasons for the dissolution of the aesthetic hegemony of the work of art, and not avant-garde attacks and manipulations. Second, that while the works of art may have become indiscernible from mere objects or other kinds of commodities, the hegemony of the aesthetic value of commodities, and the aestheticization of global art-culture systems, still produce potentially ambivalent and pacifying as well as traumatising effects.