3. Consuming culture

Abstract

‘Consuming culture’ evaluates contemporary art’s relationship with consumerism and mass culture. The issue of art’s separation from or mergence with commodity culture has a long history. However, during the 1990s, there was an intensification of the forces involved, many of them old features of capitalism, which contributed to the dominance of a triumphant consumer culture not just over art but over all other cultural production. Branding, used by both artists and museums, is an important aspect of the consumer culture of art. In addition, the rise of social media has brought about a transforming, and intensely modernizing, turn, opening art up to quantifiable and manipulable instant feedback.