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years ago when i was a lowly second-year architecture student trying (and failing) to re-create a pencil perspective of some baroque building or other, i remember at some point flinging my french curve across the room in disgust and deciding that modern architecture didn't evolve because some early 20th century geniuses had a collective vision--it evolved because the bauhaus crowd were a bunch of lazy motherfuckers who realized it was easier to compose a building using only squares and straight lines and call it a new "style" than take the time to develop the skills necessary to draw--much less artfully employ--all those goddam curves and curlicues.
and i was only half-kidding. the modernists, in a single stroke, threw out about 95% if not more of the architectural vocabulary that had developed over the millennia--i kinda think of modernism as the ebonics of architecture.
and as i started looking around me--at contemporary painting and sculpture and music--i saw much of the same reductivism at work.
is it, i wondered, because, as a civilization evolves, it strips away all the extraneous crap to get to the essence of a particular art form? or is it because, as a civilization becomes corrupted by abundance and everything becomes easy, it relaxes its standards and allows anybody to call themselves an artist?
or maybe it's not that clear-cut; whatever--here's the mkf unified theory of the evolution of art:
to the degree technology advances in a given civilization, artistic technical virtuosity tends to decline.*
if i had to prove the theory? well, i couldn't, but i'd sure postulate the following: take any average renaissance painter, sculptor, musician or architect and plop 'em down in the middle of now, and, once they stopped laughing, they'd be up and running in the modern version of their respective art form in fairly short order. do the reverse, and the modernists would be reduced to panhandling raphael and botticelli on the streets of florence for loose change.
am i right? i dunno--you got a better theory?
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*since i first developed this theory, computers have of course changed everything--the technical virtuosity of the scientists has made artistic virtuosity easy.
5 comments:
MKF--
You'd probably appreciate Jacques Barzun's magnum opus, From Dawn to Decadence, which discusses modernism. Barzun didn't like it much more than you do. He argued that Western civilization has outbursts of primitivism, where people try to simplify existing dogmas and get back to reality. Some of his examples were the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution, and (as your post points out) modernism.
"to the degree technology advances in a given civilization, artistic technical virtuosity tends to decline."
This statement totally fails to take The Second Empire into account. One of he most corrupt and morally decadent chapters in European history, the French nevertheless engineered the Suez canal, the great iron skeletons of the Eiffel Tower, the crystal palaces, and the vast railroad track and station system that brought the country together and united it with the rest of Europe. Then there was the massive Paris Sewer System, technical marvel and world's most unlikely tourist attraction.
There was also the Paris Opera of Monsieur Garnier, the rebuilding of Paris into the City of Light with the grand boulevards, and grand buildings; there was painting, sculpture, couture, grand opera, opera-comique, Balzac, Dumas father and son, cuisine as art, and the Statue of Liberty among all of Bartholdi's other output -- it was a tremendous outpouring of virtuosity in art at a moment of tremendous technical advance.
hubbard: thanks, i'll check it out. and while i can totally understand why this post would lead you to believe i'm not a fan of modernism, the truth is, it's more of a love/hate thing for me. more to come.
will: thanks for busting my balls--i'm waiting for noblesavage to pile on, and then i'll address you both ;)
You're more than welcome, Mike, any time! :-)
The answer is simple .
Art in the renaissance , baroque , etc , was all about the revival of the human spirit as it was poised in the infinite potentiality of the Divine . Gothic architects pointed to heaven , Baroque architects raised us there with their amazing designs . The true reason why art has declined is because the mode of reduction is COMPARTMENTALIZATION .
We have compartmentalized the the body away from the soul because some believed the soul was the most important thing (e.g. Protestant Reformation)
We have compartmentalized the soul from the body because many more believe that the material is all that is (e.g. absurd art)
We have compartmentalized Spirituality from religion because some believe that that is what's the purity of essence (e.g. new age art and music)
We have compartmentalized God from man . (e.g. modernity in general)
This is the real reason why we have lost touch with the beautiful because God is the source of all beauty and truth . Our mere recreations of it fail to resonate with our hearts except only artificially . Of course people can FEEL like they have learned something from modern art . Just like we FEEL pleasure from porn . But it's not the same kind of pleasure from seeing and respecting a beautiful person .
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