Who's Afraid of Visual Culture?

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Contemporary artists are increasingly producing works that mimic fashion photography, derive from television, or otherwise struggle to compete with the production values of the entertainment industries. This is hardly news. But the theoretical discussion of fine art as a cultural practice is still largely dependent on outmoded ideas that "art" defines itself in critical opposition to mass culture. Clearly there is a problem here. The gap between the reality of artists' sensibilities and the theoretical apparatus of much (especially academic) art criticism suggests that the understanding of the relation between fine art and visual culture needs a major conceptual overhaul more in keeping …