Capitalist realism
Years active | From Pop Art in the 1950s and 1960s to the commodity art of the 1980s and 1990s |
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Location | Germany |
Major figures | Michael Schudson, Mark Fisher, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Wolf Vostell, and Konrad Lueg |
Part of a series on |
Capitalism |
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The term "capitalist realism" has been used, particularly in
In art
Although attested earlier,
Sigmar Polke
Capitalist realism is a German art movement co-founded in 1963 by artist Sigmar Polke.[5] Polke embraced the advertising and publicity commonly found in the popular press in renderings of everyday consumer items. Often ironic and with critical overtones of society and politics, the Capitalist Realism movement is considered more explicitly political than conventional Pop Art.[6]
Michael Schudson
In the mid-1980s, Michael Schudson used the term "capitalist realism" to describe mainstream practices in advertising.[7] Chapter seven of Schudson's Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion compares the messages and appeals of advertising to those found in the Socialist Realism of the Soviet Union.[8] In his account, the realism of advertising promotes a way of life based on private consumption, rather than social, public achievement.[9]
Mark Fisher
The term next appeared in 2009 with the publication of
His ideology refers to a perceived "widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it".[11]
As a philosophical concept, capitalist realism is influenced by the
Capitalist realism as I understand it cannot be confined to art or to the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions. It is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.[14]
Fisher argues that "capitalist realism has successfully installed a 'business ontology' in which it is simply obvious that everything in society, including healthcare and education, should be run as a business"[15] (cf. New Public Management).
Following the publication of Fisher's work, the term has been picked up by other literary critics.[16]
The term has also been used by Japanese scholar Yoshifusa Ichii to characterize the way that the International Olympic Committee and its stakeholders, along with the Japanese state, took advantage of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the COVID-19 pandemic in order to further expand capitalist profits, state power, and national mobilization. Ishii combines Fisher's capitalist realism with Jules Boykoff's "celebration capitalism" to explain that "the celebration capitalism of the Olympics reinforces capitalist realism by creating a state of exception, which maximizes the flow of capital while invoking the biopolitics of a “new lifestyle” that echoes wartime slogans of national mobilization."[17]
See also
- Real capital
- Socialist realism
- Social realism
References
Notes
- ^ Gibbons, p.53
- ^ E.g. by Abraham Polonsky of Edward Dmytryk's The Caine Mutiny: William Pechter and Abraham Polonsky, 'Abraham Polonsky and "Force of Evil"', Film Quarterly, 15.3 [Special Issue on Hollywood] (Spring, 1962), 47-54 (p. 53); https://www.jstor.org/stable/1210628.
- ISBN 1-85669-451-8
- ^ Pollack, Maika (23 July 2014). "Living With Pop: A Reproduction of Capitalist Realism' at Artists Space". The New York Observer. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
It was a reaction to Pop from a postwar Germany divided between East and West.
- ^ Schudel, Matt (13 June 2010). "German artist Sigmar Polke, creator of 'Higher Beings Command,' dies at 69". The Washington Post. Retrieved 17 November 2014.
In the 1960s, Mr. Polke was at the vanguard of a German artistic movement called capitalist realism, along with fellow painter Gerhard Richter -- who later expressed reservations about his colleague's work, saying "he refuses to accept any borders, any limits."
- ISBN 1856694267
- ^ Gibbons, p.55
- ^ Michael Schudson, 'Advertising as Capitalist Realism', in Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 209-33 (repr. in Advertising & Society Review, vol. 1, issue 1 (2000).
- ISBN 90-5823-085-6
- ^ ISBN 978-1-84694-317-1(pbk.); 1846943175 (pbk.).
- ^ Fisher, Mark (2010). Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. Winchester, UK: Zero Books. pp. 2.
- ISBN 978-1846943171.
- ISBN 9781846943171.
- ^ Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there no Alternative? (Winchester, UK; Washington [D.C.]: Zero, 2009).
- ^ Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester, UK; Washington [D.C.]: Zero, 2009, pg17).
- ^ Prominently Mark Fisher and Jeremy Gilbert, 'Capitalist Realism and Neoliberal Hegemony: A Dialogue', New Formations, 80--81 (2013), 89--101 DOI:10.3898/NEWF.80/81.05.2013; Reading Capitalist Realism, ed. by Alison Shonkwiler and Leigh Claire La Berge (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2014).
- ISSN 1869-2729.
Bibliography
- Caldwell, John. Sigmar Polke, (San Francisco:San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) 1990, p 9
- Gibbons, Joan. Art And Advertising. I.B.Tauris, ISBN 1-85043-586-3
- "Capitalist Realism." Artsy. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2017.