"...Now art is living only through its own commemoration. It has become a closed system, art for art's sake, from which nothing comes out any more. Yet art is a confrontation of man with the illusion of the world, and a way of subduing this illusion through a symbolic representation. But we see today that contemporary art does not speak any more of this illusion, it does not try to subdue this illusion any more. It plays with its own history, and this is a weak strategy. Art exhausts itself in a game which does not commit to anything and in which there are no more rules. It makes its own advertising...."
Jean Baudrillard, from an interview entitled "La vie sous vide," Telerama Nno.2128 (Paris), 24 October 1990.
(Trans. Philippe Billé.)