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@hassanr
warhol was a whore, as are almost all successful artists, and he was openly proud of it. warhol never objected to the commodifitaction of his work. he himself set up the 'factory' as a means of mass producing work to sell. the cans (as a fairly early work, one of his first gallery showings i think) don't condemn the capitalist aspects of the art world, more open them up, making them more blatant and obvious. he himself famously claimed to aspire to being a robot, having (supposedly) eaten the same lunch for 25 years, and putting up metallic wall hangings in his studio to give a more industrial atmosphere, and naming it 'the factory'. much of his work (especially marilyn/elvis/crash scenes/etc) tends not to be about the commodifiation of art in the sense of condemnation or criticism, but about the act of consumption and the effects of the buyer/consumer/viewer's actions on the object/artwork/person/personality that they consume. (don't get me wrong, warhol was a waker, but for different reasons)
as i see it, most (though not all) of the perceived hypocracy and pretension often stems from a lack of information (which i will definitely agree, is mostly the fault of the art institution), and also has a lot to do with the way that museums (where the vast majority of any given population encounter artworks) display works and disseminate information. they make it boring and stale, without engaging the visitors or attempting to ellicit a response from them. art tends to be presented "here it is, this is what you should like, it is good" and that is not only boring and wrong, but couter productive, as it tends to put peoples backs up.
your distinction between art as a solely aesthetic experience and funtional or discoursal forms seems fine, there are definite differences in the way one engages with them, and their reception by the public, but i still don't see a need to divide them into two categories of 'art' and 'non art(?)'. it's all still art, just different incarnations of the same ugly beast.
yes. pub. uk visa. another american accent.