A fluid boundary between popular and serious art existed in the eighteenth century

Evidence

The earlier popular culture maintained a certain equilibrium between its social ideology and the actual social conditions under which its consumers lived. This probably helped to keep the border line between popular and serious art during the eighteenth century more fluid than it is today. Abbé Prévost was one of the founding fathers of French popular literature; but his Manon Lescaut is completely free from clichés, artistic vulgarisms, and calculated effects. Similarly, later in the eighteenth century, Mozart’s Zauberflöte struck a balance between the ‘high’ and the popular style which is almost unthinkable today. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 219

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: The historical baseline — where ideology matched conditions — gives a concrete contrast point for the reader’s test of where the culture industry’s break actually occurred.