The culture industry: when art becomes a commodity
This article draws on my master's thesis: Verdier, D. (2024). How to serve the democratization of Art among citizens in the digital context of 2024? M.Sc. in Management of Social Innovation, HEC Montréal (supervisor: Rafael Ziegler).
The Frankfurt School thinkers Adorno and Horkheimer coined the 'culture industry' to describe how art, mass-produced and standardized, risks becoming just another product to consume. In an age of infinite feeds, the warning feels more relevant than ever.
Standardized culture, passive citizens
In Dialectic of Enlightenment (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1947), mass culture is produced like any industrial good: predictable, easy, profitable. The danger is not bad taste but passivity — citizens trained to consume images rather than to interpret or make them. Online, art that scrolls past in seconds keeps little exhibition or cultural value.
Convergence, attention, and the feed
Jenkins (Convergence Culture, 2006) showed old and new media colliding, turning audiences into participants — but also into content. Lovink (Sad by Design, 2019) describes how platform design monetizes attention and mood. Art on social media becomes a multimedia content submitted to the attention market, where popularity is set by referencing algorithms, not by meaning.
An alternative: art with intention
The answer is not to reject the market but to re-introduce intention: original works by named, living artists; transparent stories; a physical encounter. Choosing a real painting over an infinitely-copied image is a small act against the culture industry — it restores the singular value Adorno feared we were losing.
