on the impact of automation on the art object are pertinent to a consideration of what happens to the sexual object in the modern era. I think one can speak of both an industrialization of sexual relations and a sexualization of industry.
The “industrialization” of sexual relations is well-illustrated by the stream of drawings, paintings, and objects depicting coupling machine parts produced in the early part of the 20th century by Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp.
The same images, of course, also depict the sexualization of industrial processes. What comes into view is the simultaneous sexualization of production and consumption. The commodity provokes something like sexual mania in the consumer and modern consumption acquires a distinctly onanistic character, at once addictive and unsatisfying. Simultaneously, sex itself becomes a form of consumption, no longer associated with (re)production but with obtaining the same momentary gratification that accompanies shopping. More broadly, we see the intrusion of sexual allusion into all forms of display. Everything is packaged to be sexy, and the consumer is incessantly distracted by one tease after another. This, perhaps, accounts for why in the Western world, the inability to focus is endemic.
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