Has Modernism Failed? revised edition

I obtained Suzi's revised edition and it's remarkable. This is my favorite book of the semester. She strikes me as a very important voice in the Art World. At the same time I've heard that she quite upset the apple cart with this book and many people were unhappy to read her indictment of Modernism, although I think she was gentle enough, and fair.
In the last two chapters of the revised edition she addresses the most important shift in power to occur within the last 50 years, "the shift in power from the nation state and its bureaucrats to multinational corporations and their entrepreneurs." (p. 139)
Although I cannot quote the source well enough, I read that transnational corporations owned more than 51% of total global wealth after the year 2004. Nation-states fell in second and though this shift went largely unnoticed by the general public, it did catch my attention.
I was concerned that so much of the world's wealth was concentrated in the hands of entities that do not need to answer to anyone. They are transnational, and as such unaffected by voting, representative governments, angry citizens, and other inconvenient stumbling blocks to the consolidation of their own enormous wealth.
Suzi Gablik is also correct in pointing out that their control and power are not strictly limited to monetary goods, but also in the exportation of consumer culture media. (p. 140)

In my own opinion it is the exportation and enlargement of the 'spectacle' that Debord refers to. Corporations are spreading their infectious meme through every kind of media outlet possible. I have seen it myself, first when I traveled to Asia in 1992, and then when I traveled through Eastern Europe between 2003-2005.
I love the quote she offers from the professor at Cairo University Thomas L. Friedman, "Does globalization mean we all have to become Americans?"
How funny is that?

I am intrigued by the move of art into activism. She mentions Nigerian scholar Okwui Enwezor, the director for Documenta 11, an international art exhibition in Kassel Germany. The entire show addresses the effects of global capitalism, and the "unyielding theology" of Western art traditions and canons. (p. 142) Enwezor has put forth a view of art that is much different than anything I am used to, he is suggesting art as activism, where the medium is culture and society. (p. 143) For me this is a bold move and a very profound one, it also seems to engage philosophy with art, which is an idea I have been mulling over for years. It's great to know that it's happening now and it fills my head with ideas about how I might involve myself in these exciting new trends.

In Chapter 10 of the revised edition she addresses integralism. For her position it refers to the "intersubjectivity and transdisciplinarity" of the new art culture. Her integralism also
has a secular flavor, although she endorses a marriage of ethics and art she frames it in carefully universal "service to humanity" language. (p. 150) She uses the Empty Bowls project as an example. Pottery was used to solicit donations to combat world hunger, two million dollars were raised in various efforts. Gablik drives the point home when she says, "This project honors the world by really seeing it." (p. 151)

I think that's what all really good art does, it shows us some truth. These new art forms seem to go a step further by involving themselves in making real change. There are so many great examples in the end of her book, she ends on a positive note, telling us, "My sense is that significant changes in power relations are occurring..." (p. 155)
Then later she mentions the Watershed project in the Hudson River Valley. This unique example serves to illustrate her claim that, "The arc of specialization has been displaced by another organizing principle - decentralized creativity - in which the individual artist becomes a structural component in a society of selves that fit their contributions together in a mutual enrichment." (p. 159)