It may be enough to know that, in theory-drunk circles of the period [the late 70s and early 80s], any sort of aesthetic appeal could be regarded as a stratagem of “late capitalist” ideology or some other wrinkle of malign social power. (The enemy’s identity was never entirely clear.) Artists were obliged to signal knowingness on this score. If critical paranoia poisoned visual and imaginative pleasure, that was unavoidable: a toll of enlightened consciousness.
(Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker)
Many things are clearer to me now. Seriously.