Mass culture and the modern world-system

Abstract

Pictorial prints1 were the first form of mass-produced images for popular markets. These mass-produced cultural goods first appeared and gained their distinctive identity in the Renaissance at the same time that elite art was becoming a distinct cultural form,2 thereby questioning much of the literature which treats mass culture as a child of the eighteenth century.3 By considering fine art as a product of the Renaissance and mass culture as a product of the industrial revolution, scholars have made it easy to argue that mass culture is a degraded derivative of elite culture.4 But if these two forms of culture emerged simultaneously, then students of mass culture will have to rethink the relationship between mass and elite culture.