Autonomous art is itself a product of market commercialization, not its opposite.

Evidence

It was hardly accidental that the slogan l’art pour {‘art was coined polemically in the Paris of the first half of the nineteenth century, when literature really became large-scale business for the first time. Many of the cultural products bearing the anti-commercial trademark ‘art for art’s sake’ show traces of commercialism in their appeal to the sensational or in the conspicuous display of material wealth and sensuous stimuli at the expense of the meaningfulness of the work. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 211

Categorization

• DEFINE: Complicates the ‘autonomous vs commercial’ dichotomy Adorno elsewhere relies on — the acknowledged complexity that makes honest application possible.
• XREF: connects to: Modern art openly admits it is a commodity rather than hiding its market status — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 118; Art’s autonomy paradoxically depends on the very commodity economy it negates — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 118; Postmodernism is inseparable from everyday capitalist life, not autonomous art. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 422 (+2 more)