The Dadaist breakdown of the distinction between “art” and “nonart,” and the subsequent mutation of Dada into Pop did not “democratize” art. It magnified the power of the institutional gatekeepers. When someone duct-tapes a banana to a wall and calls it art, validation depends on the assent of these high-placed arbiters. Such gestures have always been expressly designed to offend common sensibility. Antiart manufactures uncommon art. The purpose of uncommon art is to make its consumers feel uncommon. It is no coincidence that Warhol’s arrival coincided with the arrival of the hipster and what Miles Davis called the birth of the cool.

The myth of an anti-bourgeois avant-garde hides the collusion of the avant-garde with its bourgeois patrons to create a new class of luxury goods with no intrinsic value other than their snob appeal. The very notion of an avant-garde was always misleading. The avant-garde did not lead, it followed. It supplied what the bourgeoisie, a new upstart class, needed to mark its cultural ascent.

When the bourgeoisie was revolutionary and heroic, avant-garde art was revolutionary and heroic. When the bourgeoisie degenerated and spawned feckless ninnies, the avant-garde degenerated with it. We call this postmodernism.