Writes Jason Farago in "Ours Is the Least Artistically Innovative Century in 500 Years/A Times critic argues that 21st-century culture is likely to be forgotten. But it’s not as bad as it sounds" (NYT).
Shockingly few? I would say none at all and that's quite specifically not shocking, because nothing can be shocking. Everything even potentially shocking had been cycled through at least 50 years ago. It's not shocking that nothing — in art — is or can be shocking.
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What does Ann Althouse think about modern art? I don't care what a robot "thinks."
When everyone’s a critic no one’s an artist.
Guess he's overlooking that whole private space access revolution happening all around us. It might not be art but it is definitely innovative.
I like his name. Aside from the "misspelling" of "farrago," it fits the theme pretty well.
But back to what appears to be his main point, the lack of creativity in the arts. Who are the gatekeepers of this? If you pull that thread it might just lead you to conclude that the corrosive effect of politicizing EVERYTHING is the main culprit, stamping out anything creative that doesn't support the Uniparty narrative. You can't cast a movie without trans actors. You can't show a Christian family without there being a subtext of evil under the surface. You can't ever show black people committing crimes or Chinese soldiers being aggressive. You can't even exhibit classic art without some snotnosed global warming religionist doing damage to the art works.
Why? Who made those rules? Whose enforcing them? Oh, the same people who pay this idiot to suck his thumb and claim a lack of "innovation" are running the show. Look in the mirror asshole.
Or maybe a lot of people are keeping their powder dry so to speak. I've been working on my first edition of GWOT poetry since before I left the Army. It's just not ready for primetime yet (just like Dostoevsky...everything has to be perfect).
In a world where 99% of artistic license is volume, not quality, it makes sense to wait for and work quietly on perfecting something you care about.
I'd say you just don't Recognize today's art forms.
The Art of convincing a culture, IT is sick and Needs to be replaced with barbarism; That IS art
The Art of convincing little girls, THEY are sick and Need to castrate and mutilate themselves: Art
The Art of convincing an Entire Race, that THEY shouldn't even try; because RACISM: Art
The Art of convincing an Entire Race, that THEY are RACISTS: Art
Innovative, transformative*, pioneering culture.. What MORE do you want?
transformative* Seriously! you Want transformative? HERE IS transformative
The Liberal establishment has simply labeled anything it disagrees with as "hate speech" or "racist" or "fascist" or whatever. So anything truly shocking, i.e something that violates the norms or icons of the rich and powerful - can't be done.
The only "Shocking art" allowed is that which attacks the same targets that have been attackef for over 100 years. I.e. Western Civilization, Patriotism, Christianity, white people, middle class values, etc.
Christ in piss is no longer shocking. A simlar attack on Judaism or Islam is not allowed. Art that takes the side of the Palestians COULD be shocking, but it would be labeled "antisemtic" and run off or shut down. Assuming the ADL didn't prevent if from happening in the first place.
True shock can only occur when you go after the sacred cows. And our sacred cows are currently well protected. The Iconoclasts only go after the Icons of the powerless.
You CAN'T transform a culture with paint.. You need chemical castration, hormones, and surgery!!
NYT misses the point. The printing press popularized and created repositories of written works. Radio, movies, TV, and the Internet moved this further along. Creators now compete with what came before, even after they created every story imaginable. Those screaming "I was first" are upset, but that crowd always needed a pacifier and to learn by suffering from failure.
Chat GPT is a great example of derivative creativity, but not a whole lot different from what the 1950s-1960s TV script writers did as they strip-mined Shakespeare and Victorian-era novels for Star Trek and Beverly Hillbillies plots. Chat GPT is perhaps the first draft of the humanoid robots of Blade Runner who don't know they are robots, but who live human-like lives. That's life in creative sweatshops today.
Of course, I'm too sure whether "Innovation" in the arts/culture is some great thing. Art should be the true and the beautiful. Abstact art certainly was "innovative"" but who cares about it anymore?
Most of the "innovation" in the 20th century: Atonal music, absract art, stream of consciousness novels, poetry without rhyme, etc. is dead as a doornail.
I've often wondered why Movies/TV are so bad, but that seems more due to the general decline of taste and intelligence in our cultural elite than anything else. The other factor is that movies/TV used to pilfer plays and novels for their subject matter. And since those two art forms are on life-support, they now have to rely on original stories. Or re-cycle the same old stories
The suspicion gnaws at me (does it gnaw at you?)
It’s the same in the sciences, medicine, even tech. Just look at the ‘leaders’ in any of these fields, their agendas all look the same, sound the same. My high school friends in STEM ended up just the way we all joked they would, moping about some lab at Oak Ridge or Tufts or CERN, posting on Twitter about the diversity of the dais at the annual conference, discussing their latest administrative ‘achievements’…
…but fear not fine art, 75 percent of my nieces and nephews have chosen you as their ‘profession’🤔…
Welcome to the wonderful world of post-moderism: An excess of 'least'.
As a culture, America has been stagnant for a while. Look at all the TV and movie remakes.
Let's take the male character and make it a woman. A white character and make it black. An animated film and make it live action.
Hollywood is so shameless and lacking in all manner of talent.
Who cares about a writers' strike? They have no original ideas anyway.
The ChatBot managed to list those characteristics of 21st Century art most common and least likely to be shocking. What would be shocking in 2023 is a piece that combined real craftsmanship with an intense focus on reality - whether physical, social, or emotional. Today's equivalent of the Mona Lisa, the Scream, Nighthawks, Guernica. What we get instead is "STARtists" trying to one-up each other and clean up in Miami Beach.
Art has been destroyed by “artists”.
Very interesting list. It completely makes Althouse's point that nothing is shocking anymore - or at least that "shocking" has a conventional definition which suggests a lot of very dated forms of art.
Things I find shocking
1. Every time there's a fight involving Israel I remember that the Valley of Armageddon is located there.
2. The indifference of "anti-racists" to the consequences of the defund the police initiatives which have seriously harmed the black communities and
3. The matching indifference of the black communities which I believe means that they blame white supremacy for the consequences of their own voting. They won't take ownership and
4. The dreadful attempt to mandate policies such that white and Asian children never do better than black children if they are in the same classroom or school district. I know what the consequences will be and as far as I can tell younger people (shockingly) do not.
5. Hamas killing and raping unarmed lefty Hamas-supporting party-goers and being cheered on by Harvard leftys is the perfect symbol of Harvard today. I'm shocked that this is a reality, not someone's fevered fantasy.
How can Jason Farago write something like this when you have the gay couple in slippers handsomely sketched on the cover of the New Yorker? How I ask you, Jason, how?
This seems premature. What would we have predicted about 20th century culture in 1923?
Anyway, unlike 100 years ago, ours is now a multicultural society. In multicultural societies, literature and art obsess with culture itself. It looks inward. Nothing "transformative" about that.
No more crutches. Now it's abort, indulge, and die.
I suspect that this will be known as the great regurgitation era in cinema. A dark time in which the major studios (mainly Disney) just kept remaking films and cranking out sequels over and over and over again. Bad remakes, bad reboots and bad sequels will be what late 20th century and early 21st century cinema will be remembered for.
I think it's safe to say Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" By The Crack Emcee meets 10 of the 12 criteria:
1. Provocative Themes: The song is about me getting 'canceled' - in the modern meaning of the term - and, specifically, crack cocaine, as much as anything Dylan was singing about (drugs in general and persecution) and it arrived on the same day Hamas attacked Israel, reminding us they stone each other all the time, and Bob is Jewish.
2 Graphic Imagery: I thought sticking my head on his body, like a bobble-head doll, was a nice touch of blasphemy.
3. Social Commentary: Bob was singing about what society would do to someone else, back then, while I'm singing about what society is already doing, to me, now.
4. Unconventional Mediums: I did the whole thing using a psychic and a laptop.
5. Performance Art: the intro includes a clip from a live performance.
6. Transgressive Art: I really shouldn't have.
7. Cultural Appropriation: I think that's pretty self evident.
8. Technology and Digital Art: there is nothing analog about this project whatsoever.
9. Fuck the environment.
10. Subversion of Traditional Art Forms: doing a Dylan song as a rap number, instead of a wheezy New Orleans dirge, is kind of unexpected (though I'd been in a previous project that was inspired to try it). Also, that's Maceo Parker from James Brown's band on saxophone, which also really shouldn't happen. Not putting an interlude for a solo between every verse may confuse people, but it's a cover, not a copy.
11. See #3.
12. Censorship and Controversy: Not yet, but a boy can dream.
When the underlying ethos of the culture is nihilism don't expect better from its art. OTOH photography is the exception.
When the underlying ethos of the culture is nihilism don't expect better from its art. OTOH photography is the exception.
What the heck! The dude doesn't like hip hop and rap music? He doesn't like drag queen shows? I mean for innovation and art how about a suitcase stealing transvestite for Deputy Secretary for Nuclear Energy (or whatever the moron's title was). That shows real creativity.
Just because bad art proliferates in our time due to technology doesn’t mean innovative art isn’t out there somewhere.
But the Times wouldn’t recognize it because it’s not political.
When the printing press was created, it took a little while for its power to be recognized. The ability to disseminate knowledge by print led technology on an accelerating path that continues today. We've had electronic computers in common use for ~50 years, and it has changed how the world works, and that continues today. AI is just getting rolling.
There remain vast amounts of the unknown to exploit. Go find out something previously unknown, print it in a public paper, disseminate it on the internet, ask AI to integrate that new info into its data bases, and see what comes of it. Is still want a flying car and I don't see anybody mining the Moon yet. Get going!
A good test for a transformative work of art in any century is an examination of genius in any Requiem that has been written. The late 18th century had Mozart's final work. The 19th century had Brahms and then Fauré. The 20th century had Duruflé and Rutter. Farago clearly hasn't heard the extraordinary Requiem for the Enslaved written by Carlos Simon and Marco Pavé, a spoken word, ensemble, and piano work honoring the 272 men, women, and children bought and sold by Georgetown College (later University) in 1838 that was premiered in concert at the Library of Congress two years ago.
I would say it qualifies as an innovative and transformative work of art. It is as emotionally stirring as Duruflé's 20th century opening masterpiece fugue (the Kyrie). And that's saying something
- Krumhorn
Skeptical Voter said...
"What the heck! The dude doesn't like hip hop and rap music? "
Don't start. Remember that, right now, there's a 25 year celebration of Talking Heads' stellar Stop Making Sense going on, and that milestone wouldn't be any more possible without them admiring 80's hip-hop and rap music than the The Beatles would've without Chuck Berry. And, speaking of The Beatles, if you can't hear how ideas introduced in Sergeant Peppers have been advanced and improved upon through Paul's Boutique or Fear of a Black Planet or even Odelay then you don't know anything about music production. Finally, while I agree it's pretty sad out there, that doesn't mean there aren't people making good music. I find good music all the time, but you have to have some feel for what you're looking at nowadays. If you judge people before you judge art, you're not gonna get it. Take this Vince Staples track, Screen Door. This young man is showing you the nightmare that is black life nowadays, and he's not shying away from it. Listen to the high hat. Frank Zappa was experimenting with doing stuff like that, but not many other people. Rappers have turned it into a fetish. This is all to the good.
And keep in mind: this is just a discussion about Rap. Here's a friend of a friend doing some pretty good Jazz (a cover of my Father's Best Friend) and then, if you go overseas, there's been good stuff being done there in different styles. You just have to understand that this is your food: if you want to eat, you gotta go get it.
BTW - David Bowie left the world an outstanding gift - on the very same day he died - and hardly anybody noticed. So you might wonder if people aren't making good music or if people are not paying attention to the good music that's being made? I mean, nobody's telling anybody to follow the adventures of Taylor Swift, a woman who makes music for 14-year-old girls.
But that's where the "culture" is.
A transformative work? Show me something better than this.
Michael @10:35, I agree with everything you say (and would subscribe to your newsletter if you had one).
CJinPA, you think so? Just in classical music you had all manner of things going on before 1923. Music from Elgar and even Bruch, to Debussy and Ravel and Lili Boulanger, to all of Stravinsky's early ballets, to Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, to Antheil, to Ives, to early Hindemith and Bartok and Prokofiev. I'm not saying that all of these are disjunct from the quarter-century before that, but something very dramatic happened around the turn of the 20th century or just beyond it. The Great War obviously was a major catalyst, and so was the sort of ha-ha-look-at-us-we're-having-FUN culture that was Weimar Germany, sure, but really everywhere in the Western sphere. Throw in another few years and you can add early Copland, a helluva lot more Hindemith, Stravinsky all the way to Oedipus Rex. (I should have noted that Svadevska and the Octet and the Symphony for Piano and Winds also make the 1923 cutoff.) Also: Five of the six Nielsen symphonies; 2-7 of the Sibelius symphonies . . .
Well, one could go on. But compare the 1900-1923 (or 1925) landscape to the 1875-1900 one and they are just completely different. Whereas between 1975-2000 and 2000-2023 there is much less change. A few of the greats (Britten, Shostakovich) died in 1975; Thomas Ades and Kaija Saariaho (now also gone) and the older Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke came in; Arvo Paert was there suddenly and then was not; Philip Glass kept tooling along; Steve Mackey wrote some very intricate works; Mason Bates has lately made both a name and, practically, a genre, Conlon Nancarrow got the first publication of his music on record in the mid-70s; Jennifer Higdon arrived with her finely-honed, pastel-tinged canvases.
In other words, the mid-70s and up to 2000 were busy times; past the millennium, not so much.
So I took your question and asked, then asked for examples for the last decade (ChatGPT doesn't have info newer than a few years) and got specific answers. ChatGPT isn't intelligent, it's a probabilistic forecaster (basically what words have a high probability of follow these words based on the probabilities observed in the set of documents input to ChatGPT). If the question wasn't discussed or asked about 3 years ago you're not going to get a 'reasoned' answer because it's not in the data base.
2000 is the visible inflection, the point where the artistic decline became obvious, but the source of that decline was earlier, I think. Something changed between, say, 1988 and 1993: previous to '88 there was a sense among the entry-level people in music, writing, art, drama that breaking in was really hard, but if you had the talent and the drive, you at least had a chance. After '93 it had become clear that if you didn't have the 'right' demographic characteristics, it didn't matter how good you were. I would say that David Foster Wallace was the last person in the Iowa Writer's Workshop who was judged on the quality of his writing rather than on what he "represented."
What this meant was that a LOT of really talented people decided that the game was fixed, and they gave up and stopped writing, painting, etc. The most talented writer I have ever known (and I got into Iowa in 1990 and was in that world for a while even though I ended up doing other things, so I have some basis for comparison), eventually got frustrated that he gave up on fiction and became an Anesthesiologist. A sculptor I went to college with was so gifted that Jeff Koontz snapped him up to be one of the NDA-ed artists who did all the work that Koontz put his name to. But he saw no future as an artist and has ended up as a teacher. Actress friend started her career with a bang--Broadway, Tony nominations, singing for animated file--but then things dried up in the middle of her career when blonde girls not named Kristin Chenoweth couldn't get cast for a decade, until she started getting "mother" parts and winning awards, etc. again.
It's the same thing that has happened in academia: it's not necessarily that the "diversity" hires were incompetent, but that the abandonment of all standards of talent or quality in favor of "diversity" destroyed everything else. Think about it: if people aren't judged on talent, they end up getting judged on something else, and inevitably that something else is almost always about how well someone fits into the hierarchy, flatters the gatekeepers, and is willing to join the groupthink, the "hive mind." But those personality traits are pretty much the opposite of the traits of a great artist, since to be great, you have to be willing to do things differently than they are being done; you have to reject the 'consensus' and 'best practices' approaches and be individualistic or even (horrors) 'selfish' and 'not a team player.' Some time between the Gulf War and 911, the entire over-culture decided that individualism (except sexual deviance and violent criminality) needed to be crushed. This has had negative consequences in all of our endeavors, and art is no exception.
Short version: art has sucked for the past 25 years because without some kind of objective standards to validate talent and allow it to be recognized, the individualism that is necessary to achieve greatness becomes impossible.
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