1. The notion of autonomy was first given importance in the 18th
C. The Enlightenment
project maintained that each sphere of knowledge should be independent from other
spheres; that is, they should be let to run by their own internal laws without interference.
It meant that from then on, ethics and religion, politics and capital should no longer
interfere with art. The Modernist bohemian slogan of ‘art for art’s sake’ embodies the
discourse that art should be autonomous from external influences. So, to survive this
period Art was given a new task: to keep itself ‘pure’ and generate its own laws. At this
stage, the first theories of art start to develop; mainly represented through the works of
Hume and Kant on quality, taste, beauty and form. Kant was the first to use the term
‘aesthetics’ to examine sense and perception in relation to the work of art. Cynthia
Freeland (Freeland, 2001; 12) offers a very simplified account of Kant’s notion of
aesthetic autonomy: we label an object as ‘beautiful’ because it promotes an internal
harmony or a ‘free play’ (rather than in a studious, focused way) of our mental faculties.
To appreciate beauty our response to an object has to be disinterested, or independent of
the object’s purposes (decorative, practical uses). When an object stimulates our
emotions, intellect and imagination in this harmonious way, we are said to have had an
aesthetic experience. This experience can only occur when the work of art is completely
autonomous, or ‘purposeless’. Also, works of art depend on human genius to make,
produce or create them and that distinguishes the beauty we experience in art from the
‘natural beauty’ of flowers and butterflies, for example. So, this explains Kant’s idea of
art having ‘purposiveness without a purpose’. The purposiveness implies that we are
instigated by the author to respond to a work of art but that we must do it without
evaluating any other purpose of the object beyond pure aesthetics.

2. Also, central to understanding the Modernist discourse is the idea of the ‘universality of
Art’. The notion of a ‘universal voice’ or ‘universality of taste’ comes from Kant’s
‘Critique of Judgement’ (Gaiger; 2002; 128). At the same time that judgements of taste
relate to the individual’s personal experience, like pain or pleasure, Kant believed that the
aesthetic judgement was subjected to a universal consensus. This belief was grounded on
his observation that people of taste tend to agree when they call something beautiful. And
the consensus amongst ‘people of taste’ existed, for Kant, ‘in a mysterious realm of truth’
(Carey, 2005; 9) The hope to unearth the universals and fundamentals of art is part of the
meta-narrative of Modernism and embedded in a belief that an absolute truth is there to
be found.
Kant has left a legacy with his account of beauty and taste that became central to later art
theories by critics that emphasised the notion of a disinterested, neutral and distanced
aesthetic response. A lot of these theorists were concerned with finding a common
denominator that would set up a rational standard through which one could distinguish
what was a work of art from what was not. Clive Bell, for instance, insisted that art
should not have anything to do with life or politics. For him, aesthetics depends on the
sensitiveness of the spectator and one cannot write about art or aesthetics without having
felt it before. He looked for a common quality to all objects that provoked a peculiar
emotion and he named this common quality ‘Significant Form’. He argued that to
experience a work of art we need to bring with us nothing but a sense of form, colour and
three-dimensional space. Bell also makes some uncertain assumptions about the

3. relationship between artist and work; He says there is only one occasion when art is
affected by life and that is ‘for to create there must be men’ and ‘created forms move us
because they express the emotions of their creators’ (Bell, 1949; 76). Bell’s autonomy is
mainly formalist; for him we must see the objects as pure form, and that is to see them as
ends in themselves. However he has called attention to the fact that society can affect art
indirectly because it affects artists directly. So his notion of autonomy also regards
leaving the artist alone, free from the pressure of public taste and opinion, from the hope
of rewards and from the fear of starvation or punishment. Edward Bullough also followed
the Kantian aesthetics in his principal of ‘Physical Distance’ as being a necessity in the
aesthetic experience and that our relationship with the work of art must not be
intellectually interested. Susan Sontag reinforces that art had its origins in magic and
ritual and is therefore autonomous and created for its own sake. She wants to draw
attention away from content towards form and style and she accuses content driven critics
of destroying the true value of art.
The discussion about the aesthetic autonomy can take many different directions, some
more extreme than others. Clement Greenbergs’ writings carry the baggage of an
involvement with the production and consumption of visual art. His use of the Kantian
philosophy in relation to the cultural politics in which he was engaged with. Still, his
concerns were with plastic values. He believed that one could tell works of art just by
looking at them (Carey, 2005; 17). He insisted that the judgement of taste and quality
cannot be theorized; only discovered in acts of contemplation and criticism.

4. When Marcel Duchamp’s sought to exhibit a urinal, in 1917, called ‘Fountain’, he
marked a watershed in the history of aesthetics. Duchamp’s ‘ready-mades’ stated that
artworks no longer depended on the way they look. His statement undermines the efforts
of theorists cited above to judge works of art by their formal attributes. Duchamp’s ideas
were revived years later in the works of Andy Warhol. For American philosopher, Arthur
Danto, Warhol’s ‘Brillo Box’ sculptures, exhibited in 1964, ‘rendered almost worthless
everything written by philosophers on art’ (cited in Carey, 2005; 17). Warhol’s sculptures
at the exhibition were indistinguishable to the eye from the Brillo soups-pads boxes at the
supermarket. Warhol’s Brillo boxes were not ready-mades, but they could trick our
senses into believing they were. Why did it matter? It proved that connoisseurs like
Clement Greenberg were mistaken to think that one can tell a work of art just by looking
at them (ibid).
While Realistic and Naturalistic art had used art to conceal art in an attempt to create an
illusion and imitate nature in great accuracy; Modernists used art to call attention to art,
to the limitations and potentials of the canvas, paint and other materials. Art was valued
for being art and nothing more. The mainstream question was then ‘what is art?’ A
question that was only possible because of the belief that there was an answer to be found
in the first place; and theorists engaged in a serious search for this answer. Pop Art can be
said to have put an end to the exhaustive Modernist pursuit of ‘universality’. Pop Art sees
the employment of mass culture ordinary themes, reference to advertising, comic books
and the return of the kitsch as an opposition to an elitist culture in art. It embodies the
Postmodernist challenge to the high/low divide. And this blurring of boundaries happens

5. both ways. In a development that Baudrillard named transaesthetisation, art no longer
remains attached to a transcendent aesthetic objective but becomes integrated with the
design of commodities (Gane, 2003; 28). In a hypercapitalist world dominated by images,
commodity becomes aestheticised. How many times do we let ourselves be taken in by
the looks of a charmingly designed package at the supermarket shelves? Before Andy
Warhol first introduced the Brillo Box to the art gallery, the Brillo Box had already
introduced the art gallery to the high street. Today, the transcendental, autonomous
character of the work of art is loosing meaning and being replaced by a more straight
forward view of the art world. When Danto analysed Andy Warhol’s exhibition in the
1960’s he got to the conclusion that from then on a work of art is merely what is thought
to be a work of art (Carey, 2005; 18). Given this ultimatum, the importance of art for art’s
sake declines and the mechanisms behind the valuation of art works in the market require
more attention.
Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has played a part in demystifying the modern myths of the
cult of art. The cult of art and the aesthetic arena emerge in modernity as systematic
reversal of the capitalist cult of productivity that is justified by material usefulness or
mass pleasure (Fowler, 2003; 56). For Bourdieu, the specific economy of the cultural
field is based on a particular form of belief concerning what constitutes a cultural work
and its aesthetic or social value. In the traditional views, this belief involves the autonomy
of the work of art from external determinants which is the absolute value of the work per
se. His notion of fields goes beyond the internal analysis which he finds inadequate and
reductive. He does not imply a rejection of aesthetics or formal properties, but rather an

6. analysis based on their position in relation to the universe of possibilities of which they
are a part. When studying the field of art one must consider not only the material
production and reception but the production of the value of the work; including
recognition of the function of artistic mediators (critics, dealers, galleries and so forth).
The degree of autonomy of a specific realm of activity is defined by its ability to reject
external determinants and obey only the specific logic of the field. In Boudieu’s words:
In the most perfectly autonomous sector of the field of cultural production, where
the only audience is other producers, the economy of practices is based on a
systematic inversion of the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies.
(Johnson, 1993; 12).
So, the art field, for example, should exclude the field of business (the pursuit of profit
and the correspondence between investments and monetary gains). The focus on form
rather than function in art came into being with the emergence of an autonomous artistic
field capable of formulating and imposing its own values and its own principles of
legitimacy while at the same time rejecting external sanctions and demands. This entails
the emergence of a group of producers motivated by pure artistic intention. For Bourdieu,
pure aesthetics expresses the ethos of the cultured elite. That is why art and cultural
consumption are predisposed to fulfil a social function of legitimising social differences.
A sociological view on arts becomes more and more important throughout the years. If
we look around today we see that the organisations concerned with the Arts are turning to

7. private and state funding to encourage a greater public access. Since around 1965, says
Cynthia Freeland, ‘a shift has occurred in museum funding, away from private
philanthropists; in 1992, almost $700 million was given by corporations to promote
culture and the arts’ (102). According to the chairman of Arts Council England, ‘we are
living in a 'golden age' for the arts’ (cited in Mirza, 2006; 5). Since the National Lottery
was set up in 1994, it has awarded £2 billion for the arts in Britain. New Labour has kept
up the pace, announcing the single biggest increase in support for the arts in the new
millennium: £100 million over three years on top of a £237 million base. In 2003, it
topped this with an extra £75 million to Arts Council England (ibid).
These numbers show that the Arts are undeniably engaged with external influences. This
engagement comes at a price for the art field, in Bourdieu’s sense. Private investors will
expect monetary gain. Governments will need to formulate a justification for investing in
arts. The justification today seems to be on the transformative power of the Arts in the
social sphere: ‘artists and cultural organisations are under greater pressure to prove that
they can transform society’ (ibid). In a trend that has been developing throughout the past
decade, curators have shared a ‘passionate commitment to the belief that contemporary
art has the potential to play an integral role in society (Farmer, 2000; 4). This approach
includes liaising with the mass media and using marketing tactics to attract a wider
audience. In parallel, there is a growing understanding that artistic goods are more
economically important than ever before. The visual arts sector of the cultural industry
has been expanding; curators are proud to see artists and their images and ideas
influencing advertising, broadcasting and other areas important for economic growth

8. (Jackson, 2006; 9). Given these facts, we can see why it may be inconceivable nowadays
to refer to the field of art as an autonomous institution.
However, the discourse of autonomy (both of the field and of the aesthetics) remains.
Critics and curators are constantly concerned with emphasising that politicians, funders,
and the academy must commit themselves to letting art be free. Tessa Jackson, Artes
Mundi curator, for example, says that we need to propose and celebrate different forms of
seeing the world, for its own sake. This is for her fundamental and must not be confused
with ‘a form of fundamentalism that diminishes the role of the individual and our right to
express ourselves’ (Jackson; 2006; 15). The problem with this statement is that it
preserves the modern ideal of ‘art for art’s sake’ in an environment that contradicts the
basic values of the traditional theories of art.
Art organisations are as engaged with the establishment as the most official of all
carnivals, the Rio Carnival. Still, the art world does not seem to be ready to let go of their
virtuous discourse of disinterestedness. Carnival, as a concept, and the Rio carnival, as a
concrete example of the practice of carnival in a Postmodern scenario, can help us
understand and pose questions to the relationship between the social and aesthetic
discourses on the autonomy of arts. That is because it offers us a parameter for
comparison with a popular cultural manifestation that represents the extreme opposite of
everything the traditional art discourse stands for.

9. The notions of ‘autonomous’ and ‘popular’ seem to contradict each other. As Adorno has
remarked, ‘everything that has ever been called folk art has always reflected domination’
(Adorno, 1974; 204). On the other hand, the use of the ‘high arts’ to distinguish some
types of art from others denotes a level of superiority. ‘High discourses, with their lofty
style, exalted aims and sublime ends, are structures in relation to the debasements and
degradations of low discourse’ (Stallybrass, P. and White, A., 1986; 3). For Raymond
Williams, ‘high’ is superior because it represents the most powerful socio-economic
groups existing at the centre of cultural power (ibid; 6). However, high and low, official
and unofficial discourses are locked together. As Bakhtin has put it, ‘there is no unofficial
expression without a prior official one’ and the inverse is also true (ibid; 16). Moreover,
the social and aesthetic discourses are neither entirely separable:
The overlap between high and low produces the grotesque. Putting Bakhtin in this
framework instead of a folkloric one makes it analytically powerful in the study
of ideological repertoires and cultural practices. Moving Bakhtin to a political
anthropology of binary extremisms in class positions us beyond the strict confines
of popular festivity and beyond the rather unproductive debate of whether
carnivals are politically progressive or conservative. Carnival is intrinsic to the
dialectics of social classification as such (Stallybrass, P. and White, A., 1986; 26).
Carnival is probably the oldest and most straight forward example of a popular culture
manifestation where artistic production plays a major part. It radically contrasts the
antiseptic character of museums and galleries. It opens up discussions about the

10. high/popular art divide. All in one, it denies that art must be kept apart from life; it states
that established authority and truth are relative and, still, it sees itself as an autonomous
and ephemeral celebration of popular freedom. The annual event of Carnival has for
thousands of years been the most important representation of popular subversion. It used
to be seen as a form of autonomous event coming from the lower layers of society to
confront the established order. In a way, it resembles the original bohemian creed of art
for art’s sake that gave life to the Modernist art scenario in the 19th
century. The idea that
the artistic pursuit should be a justification in itself freed art from moral justifications.
The intention behind this idea was that it allowed art, like carnival, to be morally
subversive. Also, in the same fashion that the Arts have been criticised for its growing
engagement with external influences, carnival has been since criticised for its
conservativeness. The festival that once opposed all that is humdrum has been accused of
being humdrum itself. For some academics, carnival is seen as a mere form of escapism.
Indeed, if we look at the Rio carnival from an outsider’s perspective, what we see is a
mass spectacle that does not hide the fact that it is sponsored by a number of
corporations. The TV coverage of the Rio carnival is bombarded with sponsors’ logos on
the screen and the very frequent close-ups of the VIP balconies with their respective
company’s logos. The Carnival in Rio receives money from national, international
investors; from state private sectors; from legal and illegal sources. However, the Rio
carnival has developed from and owes its existence to an ancient tradition of autonomous
popular subversion. Deep down, it still celebrates the body-based, grotesque and
subversive elements of popular culture in its aesthetics (Dentith, 1995; 66). Conceptually

11. speaking, carnival is autonomous in the way that it, like art in the Modern sense, is run by
its own internal rules. In the ephemeral moments of carnival, a new unofficial truth
emerges (Vice, 1997; 154). When we say that ‘a successful work of art, in the Modern
sense, would demonstrate the principal of harmonious self-regulation’ (companion to art
theory; 163), so would a celebration of carnival. Carnival has been described as a time
outside time, a liberation from all that is humdrum and a popular mobilization against the
seriousness of official culture (Dentith, 1995; 76). If we place ourselves inside the
celebration of Carnival in Rio, our understanding will be very different from that of the
TV coverage spectacle. That is because, in essence, carnival is ‘a spectacle without a
stage, in which the participant is both actor and spectator’ (ibid; 149). By taking the event
of carnival and giving it a stage (the TV set) we spoil the basic spirit of the festival which
depends on active participation.
The main criticism of carnivals in the conceptual arena is about the ephemeral and
authorised character of their transgressions. Because it is authorised, carnival
transgression seems to serve the interest of the high social order as a way to relieve the
public tension. As George Balandier puts it, ‘the supreme ruse of power is to allow itself
to be contested ritually in order to consolidate itself more effectively’ (cited in Poetics;
14). The ‘licensed release’ offered by carnival to the masses can be interpreted as a mere
form of cathartic escapism. In this sense, carnival does the inverse of what it promotes;
instead of being subversive it becomes a form of social control by the high and therefore
‘serves the interests of that very official culture’ (Stallybrass, P. and White, A., 1986; 13).
As Terry Eagleton has pointed out:

12. Carnival is so vivaciously celebrated that the necessary political criticism is
almost too obvious to make. Carnival, after all, is a licensed affair in every sense,
a permissible rupture of hegemony, a contained popular blow-off (Eagleton, 1981;
148).
Despite the criticisms, carnival still intends to preserve a revolutionary character. It may
not be effectively transformative in the political sense but it can still be said to be
transgression in a broader sense because it, in some ways, expresses a behaviour that
offers an alternative to the commonly held cultural codes, values and norms’ (Stallybrass,
P. and White, A., 1986; 17). In this way, carnival works as a ‘catalist and site of actual
and symbolic struggle’ (ibid; 14). It intends to be autonomous in its content; in what is
artistically produced during its ephemeral celebration period. This behaviour can be seen
in the various elements of the Rio Carnival, from costumes to samba lyrics. The winner
of the Rio carnival this year was a samba school called Vila Isabel and it had the
‘unification of Latin America’ as its main theme. This theme covers some important
political and cultural issues such as the struggle to save Latin America from the growing
economic and cultural US intrusion. Appendix 1 shows an example of how costumes
speak of this theme with the combination of the flags from Brazil and Ecuador,
demonstrating the Brazilian support to the whole of Latin America. The lyrics of their
winning samba also speak of the liberation of Latin America. It quotes from Che Guevara
asking Latin Americans to be strong without loosing their tenderness (or their own
culture). Some of the language used in the lyrics is ‘Portunhol’, a mixture of Portuguese

13. and Spanish. In the same fashion, other schools, such as Mangueira, the most traditional
samba school in Rio, also engaged in supporting the social policies of Latin America’s
left-wing presidents.
These are examples of how the intrinsic cultural notion of carnival’s autonomy shows
inconsistency when confronted with the way in which the business of the Rio carnival
engages itself with the establishment. In an almost absurd way, foreign companies,
including American multinational corporations, sponsor an event that speaks against
these companies main economic and political interests. This can be explained, if at all, by
a Postmodern relaxation in the way the world today deals with cultural affairs. Dick
Hebdige says that Postmodernism ‘announces at the very least a certain degree of
scepticism concerning the transformative and critical powers of art, aesthetic and
knowledge’ (Hebdige, 2001; 337). While carnival as a concept was built upon an idea of
autonomous popular transgression (and the Rio carnival maintains this tradition through
its choices of themes) the whole way in which carnival functions contradicts its own
basic ideas. The same, as we have seen, is happening in the art world at the moment.
While the discourse of autonomy and the autonomy of the content of art works may
remain, the environment in which they exist can no longer maintain an autonomous
status.
To illustrate the relationship between autonomy, art work, artists and audiences we can
look into one/two of the most eminent artists working today: Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
The couple has been working together since the 1960’s and some of their installations

14. achieved world-wide recognition. Their work is controversial and hard to define; they
have elements of land art, site-specific and performance. In an interview published in
their official website, Jeanne-Claude says: ‘Christo and I believe that labels are very
important, but for bottles of wine, not for artists, and we usually don’t like to put a label
on our art’. They prefer to call themselves ‘environmental’ artists (not land-artists)
because they do their work both in rural and urban landscapes but they also say that their
works have elements of painting, sculpture, architecture and urban-planning. Most of
their installations are in impressive in size and scale and the materials they use are mostly
recyclable. Their latest work, ‘The Gates’, in Central Park, New York, consisted of a total
of 7,503 gates made of saffron-yellow material. They were five metres high and had a
combined length of 37 km. The total materials used according to the artists were 5,390
tons of steel, 315,491 feet (96 km) of vinyl tubing, 99,155 square metres of fabric, and
15,000 sets of brackets and hardware (n/a, 2006). Christo and Jeanne say that they
produce works of art that they believe will be beautiful. They do not create art to please
the public but for their own satisfaction. Size, form and the way they raise money for
their projects are all part of their aesthetic decisions. Aesthetic pursuit is for them the
only justification for doing what they do.
When looking at one of the couple’s art works we are likely to wonder what the
preparation process must involve. Indeed, it takes a lot of negotiations, money-raising
and diplomacy, done behind the scene. Monumental sculptures do not just appear in the
middle of one of the most famous square in the world in a supernatural way. In fact, the
idea for ‘The Gates’ project occurred in 1979 but it was only a few years ago that the

15. artists were granted permission to build it. The money-raising factor is perhaps the most
interesting aspect of their projects’ preparations. The artists do not accept any form of
sponsorship. All their projects are paid for with the money the raise from selling earlier
smaller-scale artworks to museums, galleries, art dealers and collectors. They refuse
sponsorship because they do not believe that there can be ‘an offer without strings
attached’; they often call their work ‘a scream of freedom’. This is one aspect of their
autonomy. They make sure all their installations are removed after 14 days and guaranty
that their major works will never go up for auction (the size and scale of the works
impedes this anyway). Although Christo himself sells his small scale artworks to raise
money for the larger scale works, the monumental installations are not for sale. When it
comes down to the autonomy of the art works themselves, Christo and Jeanne-Claude
like to affirm that they do not contain any statements or engagement with any external
factor. They say the only intention of their works is to promote a sensation of joy and
beauty and are, therefore, autonomous.
However, this disinterested sensation may be achievable only by the artists themselves
who must indeed feel a great deal of excitement and joy whenever they accomplish one
of their massive projects. For the rest of the general public, the effort that the artists make
to keep their works pure and autonomous could be working in a different direction. By
saying that the way they raise money for their projects is part of their art, the artists imply
that an awareness of the preparation process is expected from spectators of their work.
This awareness interrupts the aesthetic experience (in Kant’s sense) in many different
ways. First because we are invited to think about the reasons why they chose to do their

16. projects in this particular way. Inevitably, the artists will be making statements about the
mechanisms of the art field, and its involvement with other (external) fields, such as the
field of business. One of these statements could be interpreted as a response to the
astronomical prices paid for art works at art auctions. By not selling their installations the
artists are trying to escape the art market and set themselves up as examples of anti
commercialization. A similar statement can be made by the way they reject sponsorship.
If we analyse further, the whole process, from creation to removal and the transitional
character of their installations can be seen as a greater (and rather amusing) subversion of
the larger capitalist mode of production. The basic logic of the capitalist system is that a
lot of labour and raw material is put into the production of goods that will be priced in
proportion to the amount of effort and investment that has been put into producing them.
Christo and Jeanne, invest millions of dollars in their projects, use vast quantities of raw
materials and labour to produce goods that will never be sold.
These extra readings uncover the subversive character of Christo and Jeanne’s works.
The way in which they transgress the established order shares similarities with carnival’s
original subversive and autonomous quest. While carnival wishes to comment on class
and power issues, Christo and Jeanne challenge the ideologies they are embedded in: the
logics of the art market. However, just like carnival has been criticised for its invalidity
as an agent of transformation, Christo and Jeanne’s subversions are also ambiguous.
There will always be ideological limits to any transgressive challenge. In the same way
that carnival is an authorised transgression, so can it be said about Christo and Jeanne’s
works. While carnival is explicitly engaged with sponsors, Christo and Jeanne are

17. indirectly engaged with the art market that they challenge. In one way or another, the
couple’s works have to be paid for. They can only pay for their works in the way they do
by engaging in a great deal of self-marketing to raise the art world’s awareness and
interest in what they do. They would never be able to sell enough small scale artworks to
pay for the big ones if they had not conquered recognition in the art market to start with.
Christo himself acknowledges in their website that at the beginning, it was impossible for
him to sell any of his early works. No one was willing to accept his ‘Wrapped Cans’ not
even for free. The young couple traced their strategies to get into the market since those
times. Their self marketing tactics involved their decision to exclude Jeanne’s name from
the partnership until Christo had established himself as an artist. Jeanne says on their
official website: ‘The decision to use only the name “Christo” was made deliberately
when we were young because it is difficult for one artist to get established and we wanted
to put all the chances on our side’. Their self marketing work today consists of giving
endless interviews and lectures in museums about their work. There is an undeniable
effort to keep the art world on their side. Again, both the Rio carnival and Christo contest
the practices of the institutions that support them. The same way that carnival needs its
sponsors Christo and Jeanne need the consent from the authorities to build their projects.
And the only way they can convince the authorities to give them their support is through
establishing themselves in the environment that their works will later contest.
As we have seen, both extremities of cultural production seem to face similar problems
when it comes to negotiating notions autonomy in the contemporary scenario. On one
side we have the Rio carnival, an institutionalised popular manifestation that preserves

18. the autonomous transgressive character of the traditional carnival through its choice of
themes. On the other, we have Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the artist couple behind some
of the most eminent works of art of our times who never cease to mention their intention
to produce authentically autonomous works of art and praise aesthetic enjoyment above
anything else. The Rio carnival is explicitly engaged with external influences while
Christo and Jeanne try to preserve a discourse of disinterestedness and deny their
inevitable attachment to the art market. As we gather, given the actual market-driven
circumstances in which they both operate, autonomy can no longer be the underlying
principle through which we value one form of cultural manifestation over another. In
fact, Kant’s statements about taste are still partially applicable: value is subjective. The
idea of the universality of taste, however, becomes increasingly unsustainable. That is
because in our society, the only value that seems to be universally understood is that of
money; be it through accepting or rejecting it or dealing with it in an unusual manner.
5257 words

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