"Fashion: Mr Death! Mr Death!"The enthronement of the commodity and the glitter of distraction around it was the secret theme of Grandville's art. The corellative to this was the ambivalence between its utopian and its cynical element. Its refinements in the representation of dead objects corresponded to what Marx calls the 'theological capers' of the commodity. they took clear shape in the spécialité: under Grandville's pencil, a way of designating goods which came into use about this time in the luxury industry, transformed the whole of nature into specialities. he presented the latter in the same spirit in which advertisments - this word too (réclames) came into existence at that time - were beginning to present their wares. He ended in madness." 1935
"Fashion prescribed the ritual by which the fetish Commodity
wished to be worshipped, and Grandville extended the sway of fashion over the
objects of daily use as much as over the cosmos. In pursuing it to its extremes,
he revealed its nature. It stands in opposition to the organic. It prostitutes
the living body to the inorganic world. in relation to the living it represents
the rights of the