Critics once saw their role as separating authentic art from manufactured kitsch

Evidence

For most of the twentieth century, the spiritual leader for critics was neo-Marxist theorist Theodor Adorno, who maligned popular culture as manipulative propaganda. Writers in this lineage advocated for true artists and fought against the cynical excesses of the culture industry. They saw their job as separating art from kitsch, and in the early aughts, that meant elevating the Strokes and the White Stripes as good and impugning Creed and Hoobastank as bad. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 117

Categorization

• XREF: Adorno’s culture industry critique connects to the ‘Immodesty’ and ‘Omnivore Monoculture’ themes Marx is building toward — the death of the critic-as-tastemaker. — connects to: High culture’s contempt for kitsch revealed its own bad conscience; Higher art must approach the masses by assimilating kitsch — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 874; A band’s inauthenticity can itself be its genuine artistic material. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1052