Britannica Sources used in this answer

Why did critics worry that avant-garde art could become fashionable and marketable?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Painting by Gustave Courbet showing the artist at his easel in a crowded studio, surrounded by figures including a nude model, onlookers, and a child with a white dog. — Art criticism *The Painter's Studio*, oil on canvas by Gustave Courbet, 1854–55, in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.

Critics worried that avant-garde art could become fashionable and marketable because its radical, "shocking" nature was often quickly assimilated by capitalist structures, transforming it from a symbol of resistance into a luxury commodity.1

As noted by Daniel Bell, the "surprise and shock of the new" tends to dwindle into mere fashionable novelty, fueled by market momentum rather than a profound pursuit of artistic or human truth. This creates an irony where the art’s professed leftism and ostensible radical difference make it highly desirable as a "capitalist trophy," eventually becoming as legitimate and stable as financial assets.1

Furthermore, critics observed that in a consumer society, art criticism itself can inadvertently serve the art market by acting as the "packaging" designed to manufacture taste for these commodities. Consequently, avant-garde art, which once sought to challenge the status quo, often found itself becoming academic, routine, and repetitive as it was absorbed into the mainstream art world.1