Relationship of the artist individual to the social mass

Theodor Adorno
Culture Industry Reconsidered

"the culture industry is defined by the fact that it . . . conserves the decaying aura as a foggy mist."
what does that mean? Because there's no unique object with a strong aura, instead there are multiple objects without any strength of aura but a weak foggy mist? That there is still some mystery preserved in the products, but holds no potential for inspiration and awe?

The culture industry started to sound like my idea of mass-media. The examples he gave made me think of sit coms and hollywood flicks. But does culture industry include more?

Louis Althusser
from 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses'

that all our practices become material manifestations of a certain ideology. They effect every relationship that we have to the real world. Some examples would be nice to discuss in class.

Meyer Schapiro
The social bases of art

Seems that works of art are more telling of where the artists comes from rather than what an artist wishes to say. The question it begs is whether the artist whose origins is of that detached, privileged environment, class, academia, art-world, can produce anything sincere and true about the world in a way that engages and connects to the social realities beyond those issues addressed by purely abstract or spectacle-works.

text to be expanded....
visual coming soon...