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The democratic education of the mob
was an attempt to addict them to the aspirational tastefulness
of Victorian Society. For the new social elite, sharing what
had previously been private, exposing what had been concealed,
became a totem of progressiveness. The Tate, with a more or
less free admission policy, surgically removed the decadence
and tyranny before offering the morsels of taste generated
under previous forms of social control. The museum provides
a solution to the social chaos of the street: a site where
bodies, constantly under surveillance, could be rendered docile
through exposure to Gainsborough, Turner and Hogarth instead
of the jailer's whip and bludgeon. |
