The graffitied trains of the New York City subway system in the 1960's presented a new art form. For a brief period the graffiti writer was an anarchist existing outside the established view of art. See how quickly the graffiti writer was co-opted and his work mediated and exploited by the art establishment. The graffiti writer was coerced into producing marketable paintings. The relatively small art-ified canvases no longer carried the impact and immediacy of the original format. The graffitied canvas was the bastardization of a revolutionary grassroots art form. Policed by establishment values, graffiti art in the gallery became subservient to the very social structures street art vehemently opposed.

The successful mainstream artist sells status symbols to the capitalist elite. Attaching the frame presents a moral dilemma for the artist. Innocence of expression is lost. Inevitably, the artist subjugates himself to the established ideology as he tacks on the frame. The idea that art is independent of non-art is a means of control. The autonomy of art is a misnomer that masks the artist's obligation to the market. Conceptualizing art as an autonomous and self-analytic discipline works to limit the field of inquiry while keeping galleries supplied with sofa paintings.

In a catch 22, fine art is a pseudo-autonomous discipline limited by its own ideology. The art establishment recognizes art for its relevance to a belief system that justifies continued faith in established hierarchies and institutions. Only the definition provided by critics and historians make the gallery version more art-like than the graffiti on the subway train. The established system of accreditation defuses and absorbs revolutionary art forms before they can effect the status quo. In time, the triumvirate of art, scholarship and capital elitism will succumb to its own exclusivity, and art will be liberated from the exploitive ideology.