ART & Popular Culture

For those interested in this topic area - I thought I would add the references from the discussion on ART & Popular Culture:

• Avant-Garde and Kitsch, (1939) was originally published in the Partisan Review - here Clement Greenberg argues for the need to uphold the barrier between high art and low culture... the beginning of a debate concerning the 'true' nature of art and what constitutes 'art'. If you are interested in exploring Greenberg's arguments further, see:

• Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man  (1964) by Marshall McLuhan + The Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects (1967)
  

"In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology."

• The defence of the real (1999) + The art of disappearance (1994) + The illusion of the end (1994) + The gulf war did not take place (1995) by Jean Baudrillard 
  

"The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal. . . which is entirely in simulation. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible."  Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e) 1983, p. 146.