In all a worthwile exhibition is the biennale in venezia, where there's also a piece of Koolhaas examining the relationship between modernization, capitalism and the rationalisation and organisation of art. He places the cancerlike growth of the Louvre and the British Museum, against the deterioration of the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, disqualifying the first as an overorganised Disneyfication, leaving no open spaces for viewing art as opposed to the Hermitages decay that shows art as being part of a living structure. It also has a nice graphic of the exuberant growth of spent money on art in the last bit of the twentieth century.

Though it is maybe somewhat old fashioned to critisize modernity in this way, i like this adaptation of critical theory for the next century. Maybe it is not the elitist Adorno that ought to be looked at again, but instead Marcuse, who used Schillers 'Spieltrieb' as a way of applying art in bringing rationalization back to fysical man, alienating us from the alienation caused by the rationalization of modernity.

I'll see the Venezia Biennale just before it closes in November.

Which Marcuse book are you talking about? "One-Dimensional Man" or "The Aesthetic Dimension"?

I actually meant "Eros and Civilisation", which refers to Schiller and his spieltrieb as a means of getting back in touch with man's sinnlichkeit (as he has written in 'Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen' - http://tinyurl.com/eywmt) to resolve the desubjectivating emphasis on reason in modernity. Though the "Permanenz der Kunst" as i know "The Aesthetic Dimension" deals with the same view on art as a liberating force. A comprehensive and inclusive introduction to Marcuses view on art can be found in Reitz's "Art, alienation and the humanities" (http://tinyurl.com/7d8x6). The video portrait called "Herbert's Hippopotamus" is also a nice introduction (http://tinyurl.com/dr45h).

"One-dimensional Man" on the other hand is a visionary critique of the disclosure of western civilisation heading towards the cynic postmodern code, when surface became depth leaving no room for otherness, anticipating the views of Baudrillard. The integral book can be found online (http://tinyurl.com/769zq).

(How nice: speaking about the desubjectivating tendency and having to confirm i am a human to post this reply.)