The Commodification of Contemporary art: critical discourse analysis of local postmodernism(Vuitton-Moshiri project)

Nowadays, no cultural factor seems to be safe from the reign of consumption and commodification; it is even true for identity components. The cooperation of contemporary artists with commercial businesses, and reproduction of the logic of market is an example of cultural commodification in postmodern capitalism. As an instance, the renowned Iranian artist, “Farhad Moshiri” teamed up with Louis Vuitton, to dressing it’s windows and making custom tableaux for the brand's first stores in the UAE. Such cooperation might be considered as an important collaboration of art and market. Moshiri’s “Iranian” pop art, which contain distinct references to the cultural characters of Iran and middle east, was a suitable option for expanding the worldwide activities of an institution, which only justified the commercial and profiteering purposes by the ideological slogan of “interconnection of art and fashion”. The current study seeks to explain the Processes of collaboration of art and market by analyzing the Vuitton-Moshiri project as a “local postmodernism” discourse; and it is fulfilled by adopting the method of critical discourse analysis. The obtained results show that, contrary to the claim of “popularization” of art, this cooperation has no objective as the true general art's objective of letting people to “experience art”, and also encouraging awareness, but rather it is the utilization of art for praising the “consumerism”, and serving the market. Also the cultural identity will be trapped by commodification, if the cultural characters are utilized for art productions which are suitable for capitalization.