81 1935), the authors place the birth of Artistic Capitalism in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution, with the inauguration of the Bon Marché in Paris, the first department store in history, set up by Gustave Eiffel through a triumphal staging of the products on sale, followed by an equally triumphant response from consumers, hypnotized by so much seductive ability. As for a marriage of interest, crowned by the formula of the designer Raymond Loewy (1893-1986) according to which ugliness doesn’t sell, the Artistic Capitalism celebrates the union of aesthetics and economics by the new great commissioner of art, once abandoned the role that was of the Church: industry, which sniffs the air by intercepting the appreciation of the growing aestheticization of products on the shelves. From the advertising posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec at the end of the nineteenth century to Marina Abramović, testimonial of Givenchy (2015), thanks to the expansion of the cultural industry and the proliferation of private art places – among which Fondazione Prada is nothing but an example – the aesthetic dimension of consumer products has now become the founding condition of entrepreneurship. It is within the Artistic Capitalism that the practice of design is born, beauty with a practical sense, art jumping off the walls in order to be served on plates and tablecloths (Maurizio Cattelan for Seletti, Seletti wears Toiletpaper, 2013). Beauty as a requirement to look for in a corkscrew too; speed for an ever-greater circulation of goods, favored by the progressive lightness and dematerialization of them; hybridization blending art and design, aesthetics and economics, business management applied to museum management, superimposing entertainment on culture8. The promise of breaking down the wall between art and life that the artistic avant-gardes were not able to keep, has been picked up and satisfied by the Artistic Capitalism, capable of brandising art and making it, within the definitive 2015 synthesis by Mario Perniola, expanded art. The Artistic Capitalism packs a society of the image in which the following photo cancels the previous one, in a continuous damnatio memoriae, in an uninterrupted zapping perpetrated by the consumer, urged by a constant relaunch of the market to satisfy ever new induced needs. Lipovetsky and Serroy point out how hyper- is the prefix to put before it: consumption becomes hyperconsumption, seduction turns into hyperseduction, the flexibility of the task becomes the hyperflexibility of the work, the society of the spectacle prophesied by Guy Debord (1967) becomes the society of the hyperspectacle. As predicted by Andy Warhol, everyone can be an artist, or at least a hypersensitive to art. Thus, the term 'aesthetics' finally joins its Greek interpretation of aisthésis, 'sensation', deliberately investing the sensitive and emotional dimension of consumers. Consumption generates status, we buy pleasure, we look for aisthésis, therefore becoming collectors of experiences through it. In contrast to the vision of a capitalism who puts beauty aside in order to focus only on profit, the Artistic Capitalism recovers aesthetics and exploits it for its own soul: «No longer do we create mere products: we create brands, full of imagery and emotions [...] Admittedly: capitalism created an aesthetic man, a hyperconsumer having an aesthetic, and not a utilitarian, outlook on the world» Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy, L’esthétisation du monde, 2013 And there it is, Lipovetsky's acquittal. The Artistic Capitalism allows and encourages a kind of personal growth from a cultural point of view, given that there has never been, in such a way and with such intensity, so much attention to beauty, so many admission tickets to museums have never been purchased, and it doesn't matter if someone does it only to imitate Chiara Ferragni, if the effect is to bring people closer to the Uffizi. Furthermore, the Artistic Capitalism allows and encourages the integration of different sensitivities, since nothing should be excluded from the commercial circuit. Kitsch included. Trap included. And there it is, Lipovetsky’s room for improvement. The fact that everything is art – or better, that everything proclaims itself as such, has the non-marginal effect of lowering quality standards, in order to aesthetically establish itself on the market. In the era of the democratization of creative expression, everyone promotes their artworks (or their so-called ones), in a compulsive accumulation of likes which often, the more swollen it is, the more ephemeral: «The trans-aesthetic society is neither to be incensed nor demonized: it needs to evolve upwards, for the better, so as to oppose the fever of more and more. Modernity has won the challenge of quantity; hypermodernity must relaunch the challenge of quality of relationship with things, with culture, with time lived. The task is immense. But not impossible» Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy, L’esthétisation du monde, 2013 8 Emblematic of the prevailing hybridization in the Artistic Capitalism is the function of museums, «no longer temples aiming to create aura, but buildings with spectacular shapes, celebrating the universe of leisure and entertainment more than the sacredness of art as in the past» (Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy, L'esthétisation du monde, 2013).
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