The aesthetics of the bourgeoisie demand that their art should be valued to the degree of its appeal to human and aesthetic universals rather than to the specifics of the here and now: even though some art may be 'realistic' and refer explicitly to the details of the everyday, the middle-class 'appreciation' must be able to look through these to the 'universals' underlying them. Relevance to one's immediate social context is not a middle-class criterion for the evaluation and enjoyment of art.

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