V Deconstruction and the Fusion of Culture and Commerce

Abstract

Traditionally, the distinction of autonomous art and popular culture referred to the dichotomy of artistic and non-artistic motives of production. In a context where culture is supplied for the sake of salable attraction services, such a distinction loses its discriminatory power. The broadest and, at the same time, most pointed reaction of art discourse to the no longer sustainable banishment of non-artistic motives from autonomous art was a nouvelle vague of criticism heralded as deconstruction. Deconstruction, instead of exacerbating certain lines of cultural criticism, set out to shake the very idea of certainty itself. This nouvelle vague, though flooding the postmodern discourse of art across disciplines, was most directly translated into artistic practice in the field of architecture, where it became emblematic of postmodernism. Deconstruction in architecture denotes the theoretically relined design strategy of demonstratively subverting allegedly unshakable certainties. Its striking success, the chapter argues, is due to the demonstration of how autonomous art can catch up with the media’s professionalism of attraction without having to descend to the lowlands of mass attraction.