Museum art shows became media events that immediately spawned commercial knockoffs

Evidence

So what if Artforum called the show “mindless”? (The review was written by Barbara Rose, then married to Frank Stella, doubtless embarrassed by his inclusion in the show.) Op appeared on the cover of Vogue. Teen magazines followed along with record covers, posters, and countless print ads. Taken as a phenomenon, the Op Art exhibit was itself a form of Pop Art. Bridget Riley took to Art News to complain that her work was being vulgarized in the rag trade. (The mad appropriation of Op Art designs by fashion, publishing and the media in general anticipates by some months Yves Saint Laurent’s “high culture” introduction of the “Mondrian dress.”) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 697

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s central thesis about scenes becoming markets and avant-garde work being absorbed by commerce — mirrors the claim that culture stagnates when that absorption is instant.
• ADDENDUM: Relates to the graft analogy — high culture designs (Mondrian) being immediately vulgarized into commodity dress parallels trees being grafted into commodity infrastructure.