Aesthetic Studies Of Visual Culture Under The Context Of Contemporary Consumerism

In the early 1920s, the western academics put forward the concept of "visual culture". German philosopher Martin Heidegger predicted that the world is about to enter the "era of images." in the early 1930s. Overload of visual information filled in every corner of life, severe impacting on people's senses and contemporary society has entered an image-based era of visual culture. As an important component of cultural studies, a variety of visual culture phenomenon of the academic community has attracted a wide range of academic and theoretical researches and discussions. This paper starts from the context of consumerism as the breakthrough point, and analyzes consumerism of contemporary visual culture from the following four parts:Part one, introduction, is the main analysis of the visual culture of consumerism towards aesthetic context. After World War II, with the western capitalist commodity's rapid economic development, consumption has become an important part of daily life. The West took the lead into the consumption society. Under the influence of market economy system and the Western idea of consumerism, China also entered the beginning of the consumer society. With the coming of era of electronic media it changes the mode of transmission of culture, so that the once dominated language and culture began to take a back edge, and culture began to shift to visual culture, especially in the context of contemporary consumerism, the shift of visual culture has become an irreversible trend.Part two explores the concept of visual culture and based on it as the field of vision, mainly discusses changes in the field of aesthetics on visual culture. First of all, the shift of the visual culture caused the expansion of the main aesthetic parts. Driven by the film, television, networks, and some other modern media, aesthetic activities began to escape from a specific "cultural layer", and entered into the people's daily lives. Aesthetic visual culture is because of the extensive public participation, so that caused the expansion of the main body. Secondly, the visual culture of the shift caused the generalization of the aesthetic object. The rapid development of modern science and technology to enable high-volume reproduction is possible, leading to the generalization of the aesthetic object. Thirdly, the shift of visual culture caused the changing nature of the aesthetic character. The surface, entertainment, and the excessive pursuit of sensual of visual culture, make aesthetic process shift from the "concentration" type to "entertainment" type. Part three is the analysis of the reasons of rise of visual culture: the development of media technology for the rise of visual culture to build a platform; human visual aesthetic demand is the driving force behind the rise of visual culture; consumer society, visual culture is the root cause of the rise. In the context of consumerism, popular visual culture carries the characters of popularization, commercialization, entertainment,etc. With the improvement of material standard of living, people's consumption is no longer just satisfied with the basic needs of survival and life, but more a symbol of their identity and the pursuit of status symbols. Consumption can be seen through the symbols to display their own aesthetic tastes. Public's pursuit of consumption symbol of the aesthetic symbols seems to have become today's uncontrolled "cultural landscape." The following starts from the concept of consumption symbols, analyzes differences and qualities of showing off aesthetic symbols.Part four is the criticism and reflection of some aesthetic phenomenon while we cheered the arrival of visual culture. Some negative influences were caused by non-artistic, excessive pursuit of interests, excessive entertainment of visual culture. Today, if we want to get out of the plight of the visual consumption, it is necessary to maintain a certain psychological distance in the process of aesthetic process. We should learn to how to concentrate and be alert on vulgar, and chaotic visual information under the current context of consumerism to overcome the aesthetic alienation and to improve their quality of life and the realm in the process aesthetic independence and initiative.