Commodity Critics

In opposition to the anti-aesthetes, commodity critics often based their art on the seductiveness of everyday commodities as they stand in a democratic market. These art objects are often based on a sort of hyperreality in which the commodity becomes an act of self-expression made by the consumer. With Warhol's creation of the Brillo Box, a carefully painted replication of a familiar household item, the question was raised: What is the difference between this work of 'art' and the commodity that it represents? For Danto this artwork represented the end of modernism, but for many it represented the beginning of post-modernism.

Many post-modern artworks are made to challenge the very nature of art. Allan McCollum's Surrgates are fake paintings made from cast plaster and then painted. However, they carry all the elements of real painting: they are framed, dated, and signed, and they sold very well during the 1980s. At the root of this "hyperreal" commodity critique is a distorted Marxist view. It refers to Marxist commodity fetishism, where the object divorced from the labor that created it becomes an independant entity. However, without the element of "reality," the Marxist structure collapses. Therefore, the commodities take on a life of their own, an expression of the consumer, yet the critique underlines the illusiveness of free will, self identity, and overall reality.