Capitalist realism
- For the use of the term to describe advertising in the 1980s see Michael Schudson.
Capitalist realism was a German art movement of the early 1960s.
The phrase first appeared in the title of the 1963 art exhibition in Düsseldorf, Demonstration for Capitalist Realism, featuring the work of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Wolf Vostell and Konrad Lueg.[1]
Capitalist realism can also be used to describe commodity-based art in general, from Pop Art in the 1950s and 1960s to the commodity art of the 1980s and 1990s.[2]
It is also the title of a book by Mark Fisher, an English philosopher and cultural critic. The full title is Capitalist Realism. Is There No Alternative? Mark Fisher argues that capitalist realism best describes the current global political situation. His argument is a response to, and critique of, neoliberalism and new forms of government which apply the logic of capitalism and the market to all aspects of governance. As a philosophical concept capitalist realism is indebted to an Althusserian conception of ideology. As such, Fisher proposes that within the capitalist order there is no space to conceive of alternative forms of social structure. [3]
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.
—Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism. Is there no alternative?
References
Bibliography
- John Caldwell, Sigmar Polke, (San Francisco:San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) 1990, p 9
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