Art, Mass Communication, and Utopia

In our day that the end of history, end of art and death of socialism are declared, we need new dreams of happiness more than ever. At this point, what is the role of art? The utopic sense of art that produces dreams of happiness, in other words, union of art and politics, may be evaluated over Walter Benjamin’s ‘’The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproducibility’’. After 1960s, the course of plastic arts has changed. The inferior part of art has become politicized art especially fort he sake of ruling the masses. And the high part of art has been taken into the public relations activities of large corporations and serve in that direction. Demystification, auralessness and the lack of philosophy accompanying these has made art additionally a means of public relations and publicity, that is to say, art strengthens the marketing, sales relations of multinational companies. Under the guidance of Benjamin’s powerful article, this paper investigates the conceptions mentioned above by means of art’s serving the political mass culture with the collaboration of mass media or the hegemonic power of art and again art’s serving the global capital with public relations and publicity purposes will be discussed within the context of Benjamin’s understanding of art-aesthetics and utopia; relationship of art and mass; mass art and hegemony; relationship of art and communication; within the context of aura again, philosophy and art