Political denunciation replaced aesthetic novelty as culture’s primary refresh mechanism.

Evidence

For decades, the avant-garde mindset pushed young artists to forge new styles explicitly designed to outmode and devalue the previous generation. Andy Warhol’s pop art made abstract expressionism obsolete. But in the retromaniacal, omnivore culture of the twenty-first century, new aesthetics no longer displaced older artists—nor did young artists even attempt to. The only force powerful enough to remove someone from the cultural spotlight was now moral condemnation: not just for unambiguous crimes and bigotry, but for affiliations with illiberal ideologies. Culture always needs a refresh, and in an era where omnivorism ruled, political denunciation became an effective means to clear out the old. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 473

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends the omnivore monoculture thesis from earlier chapters — this is the death-of-the-sellout mechanism applied to displacement dynamics. — connects to: Mechanical reproduction shifts art’s basis from ritual to politics. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 629
• ADDENDUM: Could serve the counter-case article: Marx’s claim that political denunciation replaced aesthetic displacement provides the clearest statement of his ‘blankness’ mechanism to rebut.