Sublime

The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose. This touches upon questions of copyright for reproduction, the ownership of art presses and publishers, the total policy of public art galleries and museums. As usually

destroyed.)

their reward was that they could still believe, in good faith and without bombast, that art could morally influence the world. Today, the idea has largely been dismissed, as it must be in a mass media society where art’s principal social role is to be investment capital, or, in the simplest way, bullion.

In our time, this cult is fed by corporate gold-and-masterpiece shows,

that anything could be validated as long as one could find the correct strategies for getting and holding the attention of the media. In art, this became aggravated by the sudden rush of art investment – not yet the mania it would become in the seventies, but large enough nearly to abolish, for a time, the idea that an artist’s thought and