Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

1 Core Terms/Concepts 6

The Fine Arts 6

The Mass Media and Mass Culture 9

2 Art Uses Mass Culture 15

Courbet, Van Gogh and Popular Imagery 15

Pop Art Translates Mass Culture 22

American Pop 31

Formalism in Pop Art 35

The Politics of Pop 38

Transubstantiation 45

Indirect Influences of the Mass Media 48

3 The Mass Media Use Art 51

Art as Subject-matter 51

Image of the Artist in Advertisements 51

Art as a Source of Styles and Formal Innovations 54

Art as Subject-matter in the Cinema 58

Artists as a Pool of Skilled Labour 61

4 Mechanical Reproduction and the Fine Arts 71

5 High Culture: Affirmative or Negative? 82

6 Cultural Pluralism and Post-Modernism 87

Reporting the Zeitgeist 93

The Politics of Pluralism 94

7 Alternatives 98

John Heart field and Photo-montage 100

Community Art/Murals 107

Political Art in the Galleries 112

8 Art and Mass Media in the 1980s 119

Cross-overs and Mass Avant-gardism 119

Simulacra 122

Art, Advertising and Billboards 125

Appropriationists 134

Plagiarists 141

Koons, the Master of Kitsch and Business Art 142

9 Artists and New Media Technologies 148

Photography 148

Photocopiers 151

Video 154

Computers 156

10 War, the Media and Art in the 1990s 162

11 Conclusion 167

Notes and References 170

Bibliography 178

Index 191