Standardization

When it comes to artifacts that are stereotypical, clichéd, and schematic, the verdict appears unanimous: any reference to ‘standardization’ can be understood as a negative evaluation—or so it seems, at least, for the very many columnists, artists, and academics who espouse ‘modern’ standards in this matter. From a scholarly perspective, however, there is no compelling reason to assume that popular artifacts—popular, that is, in the sense of ‘works that were positively received or used by very many people within a short historical period’—must always be standardized. Not even the verdict that, in the context of art, ‘standardized’ must mean ‘bad’ is self-evident, as a look at the history of artistic evaluation makes clear.