Somnolent gentlemanly English firms were sucked into American food conglomerates

[...] Although Andy Warhol was personally more or less unequivocally loving about consumer culture his art-works were understood by the critical establishment to be seriously ironic and indeed they had that cutting edge to them. Some of the writing we are considering is closer in attitude to he work of Jeff Koons, whose detailed large-scale simulations of kitsch objects and totemic entertainment figures are both iconic and laudatory. Koons entirely lacks the "distancing" effect of Warhol's work, that cool space where a range of quasi-ironic reaction is expected. He has frequently been accused of having himself been blandly "consumed" by the consumer artefacts he portrays. It really is a question of distance. When one exists completely within a culture, as do the younger writers we are studying who have no memory of the certainties nad judgements of hte pre-sixties world, even though that culture may be a self-conscious and "ironic" one itself in many ways (look at advertising), it is impossible to sustain ironic comment about that culture as if one were writing from without it. [...]

Ellis and his youthful confrères