Yes, because with theory before practice, anything at all can be justified as art. Commercialism and marketing thrive in an environment that enables the ordinariness of something to be encapsulated in the fantasy of specialness. In fact, that's the essence of commercial advertising as it has evolved over the past century The practical benefits of a product are overlaid with unrelated fantasy benefits. In art, the ordinary, unremarkable, transient, ephemeral, throwaway, crude, vulgar, commonplace objects or actions are transformed by theory, masquerading as aesthetic experience. Much of today's art is analogous to the little plastic thingamajig sold on TV infomercials (TV art theory) that is sure to change your life. I find it funny that so many people complain about postmodern art but not about the ubiquitous product advertising everywhere. They are both the same in promising fantasy benefits by means of deceptive theory. wc
----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, February 10, 2011 12:55:20 AM Subject: Objective evaluation vs. Subjective evaluation Isn't the real reason that more objective (standards-based) evaluation is dying out is because it doesn't promote commercialism the way subjective (anything-goes) evaluation does?
