Critics functioned as status-granting institutions that countered commercial valuation of art

Evidence

Critics play a crucial role in this process. Before poptimism glorified kitsch, critics used their platforms to elevate the most daring, innovative work. Their positive reviews conferred status on artists and their fans. Audiences felt a sense of pride in their reverence for cult works, providing a counterweight to mainstream commercialism. Director David Lynch died a cultural legend—because of critical support and cultish fandom, not the rewards of the marketplace. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 857

Categorization

• XREF: The critics-as-status-infrastructure claim ties to the reader’s mechanism tracing — and is a prime target for the counter-case that status hierarchies themselves produce flattening. — connects to: The Institut rejected individual-expression views of art as historically transcendental — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 544