What is the real cause of the decline of literature and art? People say it's capitalism and or the decline of religion but I think these are both wrong. Capitalism and profit motive has existed for almost 300 years now. Who is going to say profit didn't exist in early 20th century when Grand Central Terminal was built? They built all these beautiful Beaux-Art buildings and they did it in the USA the most cultureless country in the world. What happened from 1920's to around 1960's?
you know exactly what is going on, you just can't admit it to yourself yet.
>USA the most cultureless
the USA is hardly cultureless, it simply didn't have thousands of years of interpersonal baggage unlike Europe, who's history is comprised mostly of bickering with their neighbors over trivial things.
The USA had plenty of cultures, various. From state to state, town to town, and art was created and shared. Slowly at first, and then over radio, and then over television.
Of course, technical and business ambition flourished in the USA because of the way it's market worked compared to the rest of the world at the time.
The difference between now and then is that almost all of the communication channels and public displays are owned by a handful of people, and this is globally, not just per country. And so anything that deviates from the prescribed 'norm' is ousted.
It's pretty cultureless. Look at a city like Paris and realize nothing even remotely similar exists in the US. At best somewhere in Boston you get one or two old nice looking streets at most and walking 60 seconds in either direction sends you back to hell
You've clearly never been to paris or LA, they are similar in their trash heaps and tents full of homeless brown people and druggies
Dumb troll. I went to paris a few years ago and within walking distance from my $35 hotel room in a random shit neighborhood were 3 churches that mogged anything I've ever seen in the US. This is in literally a 5 minute walking distance of each other.
Paris is a slum filled shithole
Paris is significantly older than anything in the US. Most American cities aren’t even 2 centuries old. Find any city built last century that looks like Paris.
Uh, no. The majority of American cities are around 130 years old, with some older and some newer. Paris is pretty, and France and Italy have a good collection of aesthetically developed old towns, but you're massively overstating the amount of architecturally impressive locations outside of these two countries. The US represented the peak of the architecture and design world in the early 20th century. It's not even close.
>culture is how streets look
Right...
I always know when someone hasn't been to Paris because they hold it up as a beacon of culture in the 21st century kek.
Paris is a squalid fricking ghetto unless you live in the rich people enclaves lmaooooo
You pissed off the mutts but the real painful thing was walking through the streets of Charleston and realizing some American Cities once did emulate a similar culture, but then the godless Yankees actually burn it all down
For the longest time I assumed it was Southerner butthurt and exaggeration, but architecture doesn't lie - I can only image how glorious high southern culture must have looked in 'prime
Profit motive for only 300 years, Lord save us.
>be caveman
>have only one stick
>another caveman also has one stick
>muh equality
>get friends, bash caveman's brain in
>take stick
>repeat until we have lots of sticks
>generations later
>we will now invent "the profit motive" to replace the communal harmony that existed before
My point is that you're right, though. People are blaming superficial shit that hasn't changed but didn't cause these problems before. Profit motive is built into reality itself. I'd argue the attempt to reject that causes more problems in the long run.
As for culture, America does have a rich culture. You need to be receptive to it, though. Las Vegas is a prime example. Yes, some parts of it are pretty ghetto, but we also managed to build a gigantic shopping mall in the middle of the desert that produces no tangible goods, money flows in, money flows out, and you get free drinks at the tables. That's America. You might not like it, but that is culture.
* i meant to say equity, not equality
>Profit motive is built into reality itself.
This is what Americans unironically believe.
When it comes to people, there is a rise in infantility, narcissism and consumer culture where everything has to be done quickly, cheaply and discarded quickly.
Art is a reflection of that. It has become less about skills and impression, and more about the artist blowing his/her trumpet, or about satisfying fetishes.
Architecture suffers mostly from the fact it hast to be done quickly and with least expenses. Elaborate sculptures like in your example cost a lot, take long to make... hell, it would take long to find an artist capable of such skill these days... and it would cost a lot to maintain.
>hell, it would take long to find an artist capable of such skill
the sad thing is that skill isn't the issue, there are people working in movies who are master sculptors... the problem is that the taste is gone, nobody has any taste left, everyone is just so fricking ugly inside. Find me ONE artist who can draw or sculpt genuine female beauty, nobody can do it anymore. If an artist wants to draw beauty he draws sone shitty doll faced chinkery and cartoony proportions to make pp big. You will never see sonething like the preraphaelites. People have completely forgotten
The ultra rich started focusing their philanthropy on charity for the tax write-offs instead of sponsoring artists and commissioning master works.
The ultra rich still sniff around art world, they just go for already established artists, either rotating old masters or sucking the soul out of someone like Banksy.
There's also the fact photography killed portrait commissions. Rather than leaving skillfully made portraits to heirs, the rich take pictures like any other idiot out there.
>art world
What art world when things like these sell for thousands of dollars
It's just a term, definition of art has been stretched thin so this very obvious example of narcissism can be accepted as one.
Even so, this is not bought by ultra rich, this is for idiots trying to draw attention.
That post an Anon made a few months ago about art being an elaborate money laundering scheme is seeming less far fetched by the day
I mean, it's true. And not exactly kept secret in the art world.
How old are you, 12? No shit, just look at all the stuff that went on with Bidens sons art
Photography and the moving picture. It's rather simple.
Left wing equalitarianism.
To some degree it is capitalism, but more broadly it's the global hegemony that emerged in the wake of WWII. The people in control of the world now were given full control then and they've been running us into the ground since. The goal is the erosion of culture because you can't sell McDonald's and Marvel to a culture of art and real food.
Loss of religion. Don't believe what Game of Thrones peddles at you. The population, even the upper class and the elite, were much more religious even 100 years ago than they were now. The rise of atheism is directly responsible for everything getting uglier and more miserable.
There's a lot of religious people in my country, and the elite is regularly seen in front rows of the church, yet our art scene is still shit, so the reason for things going sour is hardly as simple as you describe it.
which country
As recently as the 1990s, most Americans would respond to surveys indicating religion is very important. Today, it’s something like a quarter.
3 words :Weakened male spirit.
The consequence of that is loss of spirituality, indolence, individualism and general apathy.
Those in turn lead to the very patent issues we witness today in the west ; mass immigration, feminism, the breakdown of the nuclear family, etc.
In my opinion, the cause of the Weakened male spirit is the industrial revolution, strength of spirit is developed through hardships, much like how strength of body is developed through exercises. The comfort brought by the industrial revolution have made us too weak to collectively organise our own societies, this laisser faire attitude coupled with the modernist obsession with change brings the worst societal changes.
The actual cause of the decline of literature and art is time. Sure weakened male spirit and
loss of religion and
capitalism are to blame but these are processes of time. Nothing is eternal and art shall flourish again after this collapse and the next. In centuries from now the outlook will be different. It may take millenia but beauty shall be revered again. We have to accept that we were born onto a world of decay and that we shall not see beauty regain the throne of truth within our lifetimes. A sense of sacrifice is what we have to acquire
>It may take millenia but beauty shall be revered again.
no, we've reached the end. humanity is transitioning into a hive culture where individuals exist purely to support the system itself. where we're going there will be no more art or creativity or any of the things that separate humans from insects.
I appreciate your point of view and it is something I fear greatly myself. When I mentioned collapse I was referring to the unsustainable nature of the current hegemony, as I believe it is bound to annihilate from within. If it doesn't then our darkest fears will come true. I choose to stay optimistic and hope for global annihilation so that a minority of strong individuals may rebuild civilization on high moral and aesthetic principles for the eternity
I pray too anon, it’s kind of a 50/50 of whether we continue to get more and more psudo individualistic and materialistic or if it all just collapses on itself
A.k.a South East Asian style nations
It will eventually collapse, no system lasts for ever. It might take a hundred, a thousand or even ten thousand years but beauty will rise again. Even in the off chance that it doesn't, there no reason to despair, earthly beauty is nothing but a lower emanation of God and He is eternal.
>It will eventually collapse
no, this is where you are wrong. the problem is that even if you have a non-societal collapse, e.g. mass starvation or some climate disaster, the population is so cucked that you can simply propaganda it up. People are absolutely, completely on the leash. They could literally be dying and they will be unable to riot or create problems. They are helpless. Surely there will be people who will smash things and rape and burn shit down, but this will be a small percentage of the population and the media will use that to tell the scared 95% to stay at home and weather it out. We have bred entire generations of domesticated people who think technology will save us no matter what. All you need to do is tell them that scientists are working on it and are finding a solution and they will obey.
throughout history the greatest works of art has consistently been produced by the few who can remain unaffected by the predominant social memes, and so whether humanity becomes a hive culture or not does not matter for the creation of great works of art
Lucas's comment about selling his kids to a prostitution ring still bothers me. I don't... Wonderful stories and ideas don't have a place in this world until the people who would ruin them no longer have the power to do so.
the very essence of 'greatness' is that which is anomalous, and anomaly is a spectrum that can go both ways
you simply cant have a cake and eat it too
Nothing is unpredictable.
This is honestly, for art, the most important. This + Christianity gives you the best art possible
Man just stop trying to bring Christianity into this. This is a thread about beauty and tradition.
Behavioral Sink
>art is constantly changing
>good artists always look forward and create something new rather than rehash the past
>plebs take a fixed point and define good art as that which conforms to the art being made then
>artists ignore them and keep moving
>plebs complain fings ain't wot they used to be
>good artists always look forward and create something new rather than rehash the past
this is a literal glowie invention, art was all about tradition until industrialization
midwit, it was about innovating in a tradition. you dont know anything
>you dont know anything
post your work
I don't care what it is. music, art, writing
post what you've made
Post your favourite art piece of the 21st century that doesn't "rehash the past" in some way.
7g by AG Cook
extremely based pc music chad
This. 19th century firetruck shit sucks
Frick you, you just hate beauty
You are welcome to your mediocrities
You are in denial. DECENT works make up for less than 0.1% of what is produced today. And I said decent, not good or great. Yes, there always were bad works, but you are delusional if you think that bad art was as praised as it is today, when marvel movies are the main thing going on in cinema, or if you believe that as much bad works were being produced even though now every moron gets to publish his book/whatever as long he is part of a minority and can still take profits due to this
>he isn't aware of the multitude of mediocre and forgotten artists that were once praised by past luminaries as champions
>he isn't aware of the forgotten mediocrity that existed and was lauded in the public eye
>he isn't aware that, for instance, crowds in Vienna excoriated men who are renowned composers in posterity
>he isn't aware that crowd-pleasing plays in the early medieval period were more popular but have been lost from record
>he thinks great art used to be "mainstream"
Having a classics fetish does not mean you have taste. That goes for every homosexual in this thread.
missing the entirety of his post AND troony revisionism in one go, incredible
leftists are bot tier moronic
The ratio between trash and genius has not changed and only the historically ignorant believe otherwise. You not liking something is not "revisionism"
>The ratio between trash and genius has not changed
moron the population has absolutely skyrocketed and barely decent art is hard as frick to find unless you have subhuman taste like
I always feel like the people who feel this aggressive need to defend modern art being shit come off as more geriatric than the people they're trying to dab on for being uncultured or liking pre-modern art. Like as if they're mentally stuck in shilling for early 1920s dada and relive that situation in perpetuity without any care for the time that passed since then, like some sort of groundhog day of the mind.
television and phones, obviously
Christendom gradually abandoned Christ
>Christ
Could you just tell me who the middle figure in OP's pic is?
looks like Mercury/Hermes, why?
this isn't going to be some golden bough meme about how Christ is just a rip off of all the ancient pagan gods, is it?
No of course not, they're fundamentally different. It just shows that Christ isn't needed to create something beautiful.
True. That said, ever since His coming, we have no choice but to be with or against Him. The pagans had some confused grasp of beauty, but everything apart from Christ after His coming gradually forgets beauty along with all else
Christ shares the nature of God and God is needed to create something beautiful, whether you know you need it or not.
Art is not made for the elite anymore. It's just this. When something starts aiming the vast majority of people it turns to mediocrity, because most are uneducated and can't grasp beauty, references to other works...
It's easy to see that a work is far better done when it is made for fewer people to enjoy.
I think it’s a natural process but I also think technology and especially information technology has exacerbated things. There are immense market and technological forces putting pressure on creativity from every angle.
Hmm well, who were the best scientists, writers, painters, and artists? Christians. I don't think people get that culture having a canon is a totally new concept from the Catholic church - you used to have classical works of importance in every culture, but eventually you'd have a ruler who'd just burn everything from before. The idea that you can accrete memes, slowly and overtime, is a Christian idea. As far as I can tell, poetry is the only medium Christians can't compete in. Otherwise in everything else they dominate.
>eventually you'd have a ruler who'd just burn everything from before
Yeah the Christians were especially keen on this
>eventually you'd have a ruler who'd just burn everything from before
Yeah we all know the Greeks and Romans hated their ancestors and burned their heritage instead of revering their art
They weren’t as historically minded as us. I can only speculated but I would think the Greeks weren’t as steeped in nostalgia and historical longing as we are.
private collectors. quality visual art still exists but private collectors have grown so much in buying power that they don't need public/state/museum funds to purchase a masterpiece and aren't obligated to show anyone their art. you'll notice in the US that good publicly available art museums become increasingly rare as you move from east to west and stop existing entirely once you're west of chicago.
what you see as 'decline' is really just an ongoing process at pushing the boundaries of what it really means to create 'beauty' or 'art'
old beaux-art buildings were really just stone walls with carved statues tacked onto it - is that really all there is to beauty? what do these statues represent and why should society devote a significant chunk of manpower to make these?
back in the renaissance era statues had symbolic value and was a way for propagating memes - (I.e. Poseidon controlling two horses in Trevi fountain was a metaphor for the conquering of chaos within us)
nowadays existence is largely digital rather than physical, and memes have adapted accordingly
you may not like how things are done right now but nothing is perfect - personally not a fan of postmodern buildings either but it's part of the process of our search for beauty
>what you see as 'decline' is really just an ongoing process at pushing the boundaries of what it really means to create 'beauty' or 'art'
Firstly, most art produced today is not innovative in any way, it is simply made to please a vast mediocre and illiterate public and take as much profit as possible from it. This is true for music, films, books... every form of art. You didn't seem to take it, which is very important since we are talking about the majority of art produced, into consideration.
Secondly, most innovation that is made nowadays in art ends up being bad. Of course that innovation has always been a risky thing, but, as of now, after so much has been created and tested, most innovation tends to absurdity and nonsense.
most things produced in all ages are junk, they just don't survive for you to perceive them. The digital era changes that and gives a false impression
even so, it does not matter if majority of art is bad as long as there exists diamonds in the rough.
You simply can't create good art all the time since beauty tends to imply an extent of exception against the norm/ an extent of strength
Sometimes absurdity and nonsense may dominate (at least from your perspective) but they are nevertheless an inseparable aspect of innovation
the issue can only be 'fixed' by waiting for a new generation of artists who learns from the mistakes of their predecessors and provide balance to the current meta
All I see you doing is trying to romanticize and relativize the current state of art.
>most things produced in all ages are junk, they just don't survive for you to perceive them. The digital era changes that and gives a false impression
I did not deny that in previous posts and its tiring to repeat myself. The thing is, never before so much junk was produced (fact) and never before the junk was so acclaimed (bad films, bad books, bad music is the status quo now and I have explained why this fact is as it is, in my perspective, here:
)
>even so, it does not matter if majority of art is bad as long as there exists diamonds in the rough.
Having to go through a thousand books to find a decent and recent one matters to the reader and it is the majority of works that define the current state of art.
>Sometimes absurdity and nonsense may dominate (at least from your perspective) but they are nevertheless an inseparable aspect of innovation
I did admit it is part of innovation, but that so much has been done that it is truly unlikely that something innovative nowadays will turn even decent. Tell me some books that really is innovative, recent and good. Since you are defending them, you must know many that I am not aware of.
Anyway, I have no time to keep arguing right now and there may be many typos since I am phoneposting in a hurry. I will return later to get your books recommendations.
for example, Walter Dr Maria's "Time/timeless/No time" in tadao ando's chichu art museum combines both architevture and art, but is literally just a granite ball in a concrete gallery
James Turrel has good stuffs but it's just a colored lights so you may think he's not even trying
Though it may not suit your tastes, the Ideas within them are nice and I appreciated it
most of art these days are either absurdly minimal (to emphasize on the ideas, the meaninglessness of physical forms and shapes) or tries to trigger reactions and get attention by being overly dramatic or weird
one could say Hegel was right and art is dead - the Ideas that contemporary artists try to represent fail to be perfectly personified by physical forms
classical art (I.e statue of Greek gods) perfectly embody its ideas in within its very physical manifestation
huh?
contemporary art tends to fall under hegel's definition of romantic art, which is the 'beauty of inwardness'
'romantic' artworks - as per his definition - is incapable of perfectly capturing the personification of the Ideas behind them
(I.e. how may one perfectly capture the transient cycle of an object's existence between the platonic, mental and physical realms, in a physical work of art?) (How may one perfectly capture he totality of his emotions within a physical format?)
(or, how may one convey color in music?)
this is in contrast to the 'classical' art, where the Ideas are - according to him - perfectly encapsulated within the form of a physical statue
picrelated, Walter De Maria's 'Time/Timeless/No Time' - a contemporary fusion of western art and eastern architecture
literally just a ball on a concrete stairs in a concrete room, but ive come to appreciate the Ideas behind it
admittedly the initial reaction was that neither the artist or architect are probably even trying, but the issue is physical shapes are simply irrelevant to what they're trying to convey - the irrelevance is part of the message
The architecture seems western, the hall in the middle seems eastern.
Why do I see the opposite to what you wrote? Can you explain please?
modern concrete structures is western, but the way in which the gallery was designed is eastern in its guiding philosophy (though the picture you saw just shows a bland concrete room, this is just a part of the entire museum - Chichu Art Museum by Tadao Ando)
the sculptural installations (granite sphere, gilded wooden shapes) came from a western artist
one then may ask, 'in this case what's the point of art to begin with if it looks like trash?'
this question has to be answered by another couple questions: at what point does an object, action or phenomenon transcends its physical manifestation and become a work of art? what is the essence of art - The ideas, the physical manifestation, or perhaps both?
much like Kazimir Malevich some contemporary artists essentially try to explore the exact boundary where the physical manifestation cannot be abstracted or minimalized further without it becoming just an ugly piece of trash that even a baby can do. They try to engage with ideas that are simply difficult to capture perfectly in physical forms. This results in 'bad art' in the eyes of those who are accustomed to classical art where there are relatively more attention given to the physical manifestation of the artwork
>what do these statues represent and why should society devote a significant chunk of manpower to make these?
In the case of OP's pic, that is pretty clear. I pictures Mercurius, the god of merchants, along with naval equipment symbolizing trade, and the fruits of harvest symbolizing prosperity. Similar to the symbolism you described for renaissance sculpture. It's a beautiful expression of American optimism that was prevalent at the time this work was created. But I am convinced that it also works the other way around and the attitudes of the individual and of society are at least partly shaped by the art they experience. Meaningful art promotes a purpose-driven and meaningful life, while art without meaning creates nihilism.
Now, did we really stray away from this because it doesn't carry meaning anymore in this digital age or we don't find beauty in it? People travel across countries and continents to see neoclassical and beaux-arts works. Virtually every building constructed before 1900 is universally seen as beautiful. Whenever the public is allowed a say in architectural matters, the traditionalist proposal wins. For most of history, even common people enjoyed contemporary art and architecture. The divide between what is created and what we consider beautiful is a modern phenomenon. So I think that we have taken a wrong turn in our search for beauty and actually lost it.
you have identified that the true essence of why these neoclassical buildings are beautiful is due to the Ideas they personify. Is the classical style the only way to express the very same ideas of prosperity or optimism?
what you're witnessing is simply an acknowledgement of the fundamental changes in our economy and society albeit in a crude manner, sometimes to the point of distaste
but art will continue to evolve
to add on, is such a style the only way to express classical architectural ideas of proportions, order, symmetry, harmony and wisdom?
>Is the classical style the only way to express the very same ideas of prosperity or optimism?
No it isn't, but it is the last one to do so. As you say, art is changing, but there is a clear divide: On one hand we have elitist art, the concept that most people imagine when they hear "modern" or "contemporary" art. This art is meaningless, it's only purposes are financial gain and for the elite to separate themselves from the masses, who don't understand their art. And then there is true art, which is created by talented individuals to express their ideas and feelings and widely recognized as beautiful. Now, the reason why this art often takes more digital avenues than architecture or sculpture is because those require significant investment and so the elite has a stranglehold on them.
Looking back and seeing that the expression of beauty has always been very similar in European history up until the 20th century, I think that letting art "evolve" in the hands of some tech billionaires won't produce any good results, just like it hasn't for the last 100 years. The only way forward from here is to take a step back.
>This art is meaningless, it's only purposes are financial gain and for the elite to separate themselves from the masses, who don't understand their art
you are close. it's to create a disposable idea of the world. if you grow in a city and you see a beautiful statue it becomes part of your inner landscape. you do not actually get tired of beautiful things so your instinct is to protect them, which is a problem. when people stop caring or even hate art there is no danger, you cannot damage anything, and if you do damage something you can replace it with another ugly meaningless turd that nobody cares about. modernist monuments are literally like tumors, like a giant alien egg pulsating in your city: they're there to actively make you feel alienated, to cut you off of the environment.
your definition of 'good' architecture is simply that we start producing more sculptures that personify ideas, much like the Greek gods of the past
taking a step back to refresh on the Ideas of the past is never a bad thing but blatantly copying the style of the past is not the way to go - style of the past is only appropriate to the context of the past
Not only sculptures, all elements of style were better in neoclassical art. But my main point is that not only neoclassical architecture is beautiful, but also things like Romanesque which isn't that heavy on sculpture or a simple Bavarian farmhouse. Every architectural style throughout history has been consistently beautiful right up until the 20th century, which is why I think the change in style that we currently experience cannot be explained like the past changes and presents a genuine decline, not just another evolution.
But coming back to sculpture: The artist of the Renaissance were very heavily inspired by classical antiquity to the point that one could say they copied it. Yet no one would think that the style wasn't appropriate for the time. If the current art scene is too far removed from your ideas - which was the case with the Renaissance artists and Medieval art - you need to go back to an earlier point and start working again from there.
while I do agree with the sentiment that going back and learning from the past is a good idea, it must be emphasised that the 'genuine decline' is only on the aspect of physical manifestation of the artwork, not in the ideas they try to engage with
Striving for beauty is literally fascism.
there is still some artists making music that conforms to classical standards of beauty while adjusting to them for modern times. youre just not cool enough to know about them I guess lol but Ive shilled them repreatedly on this board
>ctrl + f "Kali Yuga"
>0 results found
In short, spiritual decline precipitates moral decline; moral decline precipitates cultural decline. Society has become godless and mean-spirited, perverted and degraded into a mere consumerist cattle stock controlled and exploited by a small group of evil psychopaths who are solely driven by evil, demonic spirits. It's all mutually interconnected and cyclical.
I was about to mention Kali yuga but deleted it
the iron age marks the climax and end of a 24000years decline from the golden age, but conversely it also marks the very beginning of our return back to the peak of golden age in 24000 years
we have descended the depths of the underworld and is now in the process of returning above ground with our newfound technological progress
classical notions of beauty and art will naturally evolve. It may be crude and distasteful now but it is part of the process and things will get better as the meta matures
put another way, it starts with you to establish your will on what it means to make art, or what beauty is!
>we have descended the depths of the underworld and is now in the process of returning above ground with our newfound technological progress
Technology is an inherently hylic phenomenon and therefore unequivocally antithetical to everything spiritual. Ultimately, technological development, if left unchecked, leads to a drastic change of humanity from without (inorganically and materially), rather from within (organically and spiritually), on both the individual and collective plane, i.e. its transhumanistic tendencies lead to a negative, potentially irreversible, alteration of the human embodiment in the face of biology, psychology and spirituality. Technology per se is a two-edged blade and if we let it assume a dominating, ubiquitous role over our lives, it can lead to an ontological degradation of our inner selves and bring us down existentially.
agreed
so start making good art as per your definition of what good art means. Why aren't the 'elite' allowed to enjoy 'bad' art if it means that can make money?
>so start making good art
ok, pay me
The only bit that really depresses me is the total domination of literature by the screen. Written simply cannot compete with visual and audio for attention spans. And the reason why that’s bad is because while in theory, a novel and a movie do the same thing, a novel can be the creative vision of a single person while a movie demands many people. Whatever niche was left over has been seized by YouTubers. That’s more of a problem for creators than readers and audiences.
Filmgays unfortunately tend to be more pretentious than literature buffs
More cliquish too, and the medium just isn’t the same. A book is a lot more intimate than a movie and a play is a lot more social than a movie, but neither are quite as easy or captivating as a movie.
I also think that film is too limited in the 1-3 hour time span
I think things will become closer to the sort of thing you’d have seen pre-20th century again, but it will be a sterile replication that lacks any creativity. It will be more like living in an art gallery or museum than an artist’s studio. I don’t know if I find that more or less depressing than the current reality but I do think it will be the reality either way.
>What is the real cause of the decline of literature and art?
The Internet, but I don't have time to prove it.
OP here. The best argument so far I've read seems to be television + internet. It became popular around the time the decline really started. People aren't learning to build statues because of fricking Christ. How do we stop the decline?
But that can only apply to literature, the decline of architecture and the visual arts started long before television and the internet.
Beaux-Arts was in the 1920s. And this type of architecture still existed up to the 1940's
The bulk of beaux-arts with the most important buildings in France, particularly Paris, was in the 19th century. But you're right, it did continue into the 20th century, and there's still neoclassical architecture built today (new classicism is a thing after all). But the proportion matters: If you have 1 nice building between 100 ugly ones, you're going to notice a drop in architectural quality.
We literally built statues because of Christ this entire time. Why is the idea that culture is downstream of religion such a difficult thing to accept when it’s so obviously true?
Of course that is true, our point is that Christian culture didn't produce consistently good art and other cultures don't produce consistently bad art. I think you can agree that picrel is beautiful, but it definitely isn't Christian.
I think Western art was the most beautiful that ever existed. Your pic related doesn’t appeal to my sensibilities almost at all.
Why do you think these sculptors were like some devout Christians who started sculpting because they had a calling from Christ? It was a trade like any other trade. They got into it because their parents got into it and it was a way to make money.
Individually, they didn’t need to be religious because they lived in a culture that was religious. Life was inherently religious, whether they wanted it to be or not. All modern art is the inheritor of a tradition that started with a deeply religious people.
1920's was the decade of flappers and hedonism. God was already long dead at this point.
>ll modern art is the inheritor of a tradition that started with a deeply
Complete misunderstanding of art history. Non-Christian art such as Greek art had nothing to do god. They weren't even seen as artists. How do you explain that?
You fell for modern propaganda about the 20s lol, look at how socially conservative people of the 50s were. Even up until recently most people in the west were relatively socially conservative.
Social conservative has to do with religious views. The large majority in the US today believe in God. God died a long time ago.
May I butt in and say that art as we imagine it is still alive? It's product of capitalism, smaller in size, and out of reach for most people's wallet, but it still shows craftsmanship.
people are just too lame to find the high art within the pop art. Even Hideki Kamiya's action video games are good and worthwhile pieces of culture.
pic unrelated?
The bourgeoisification of the arts. Only the lower and the upper classes can produce culture. The middle classes cannot.
art is the perfection of existence, physical manifestation of ideas or states of mind
the greatest art is no 'art' at all but a living act
>People say it's capitalism
art has always been dependent on capitalism
michaelangelo wouldn't have painted the sistine chapel if he wasn't getting paid for it
be prepared for a landslide of seething commies saying you're wrong and artists were all starving autists
upvoted
Look at your current political zeitgeist Americans, you think you'll be able to produce anything beautiful under that? Look at your shithole cities and all the pervasive shit your corporations, media and those with influence push. Your society is soulless and radically changing obviously for the worse. What is the point in the petty bickering about whether your society has always been this way? You too are completely influenced by the present day.
Look at how much has changed (even since the ninetees) and then try and say decent art is still being produced. Your nation is culturally decadent and sadly influences the rest of the world with its strange ideology.
Shithole cities have been a constant in history though I agree on the rest. Culture, and therefore art cannot happen really unless there is fertile ground for it to spring from.
Yes, but my point was slightly different to that. Look at SF or LA in the mid 1900s and compare them to now, look at your cities in the Midwest, look at New York.
Compare them to how they were in the 50s, and look at the culture, nature and beliefs of their inhabitants then. Your nation is experiencing (and has been for a while) great change, who says it's intellectual and cultural output doesn't just devolve to that of a Southern American like Argentina? Look at the steadily declining quality of your educational institutions and the people they produce - who are given a better education than many of their ancestors, but are far more moronic than they were.
Obviously NYC degenerated into shit in the 70s but even then the outlook, beliefs and ideologies of its people and your political elite were not so radical or destructive.
My points could apply to other western nations too. My main overarching point is that the US has lost its guiding light, it's civilizational vigour and is now declining - which heavily influences it's cultural output. For example, how can a nation be healthy, and produce beauty, when the popular cultural and political narratives have it's founding people and history in their sights?
The US has never been ahead of any Latin American country in artistic or intellectual output, assuming we're excluding sciences.
It was bad then too, US arts were a laughingstock from day one. Being uprooted from their native society leads to an incapability to create decent art. Australia, New Zealand, Canada are all wastelands too. LatAm is different because the Spanish essentially created a new people there.
Why did I waste my time by replying to you? You a moron and probably Guatemalan.
The Spanish empire created some of the worst societies on the planet.
I'm a American, not a beaner either. Latin American societies are indeed shit to live in, but there are still more significant Latin American contributions to the arts than American ones. The point is that this isn't a high bar to clear because America is such an artistic wasteland.
I see, maybe modern America. But not the America of the pre war era. There is plenty of excellent cultural output from Americans.
Americans up until recently still held a lot of culture that they brought over from Europe, I'd say up until the early to mid 20th century, at which point the distance between the new and old world grew deep enough that an almost ethnogenesis occured. Obviously now things are radically different with the post 65 migrations.
Can you list the greater contributions to global culture that Latin America has made? That's setting aside the fact that bringing a whole continental region to fight against America in this comparison is dumb.
But seriously, no, no one would agree with you on this. America dominates music, media, and culture. Going back to the early 19th century, America had a wealthy, independent society that was able to contribute way more to global culture than any of colonial Latin America was. There is precious little that Latin America has contributed to global culture aside from Mexican food. Latin America is a cultural wasteland. You're projecting Latin America's cultural travesty onto the cultural superpower, which was being acknowledged in European media as the new cultural hegemon from the late 19th century.
Europeans argue about "Americanization" because it is and was America that was the most dominant cultural force in the world. The list of subcultures, fashion styles, and music that blossomed all over the world that mimicked and copied American culture is long. New York is widely acknowledges as the usurper of Paris' role as the art capital of the world from the 1920s to the 1940s.
Name a Latin American cultural movement that has influenced the world. LMAO. There are none.
Sorry, but this is some shit tier delusion.
>The US has never been ahead of any Latin American country in artistic or intellectual output, assuming we're excluding sciences
He's right. The best composer right now is a Mexican indie podcast creator. Dude weaves music like we breathe air.
LMFAO, OKAY jealous beaner.
What architectural styles, art movements, fashion, design, music and media did Latin America, Australia, Canada, or New Zealand give to the world? American culture is hegemonic for a reason, you coping loser. This wouldn't be so pathetic in its denial if it wasn't so obvious that Latin America, Europe, and the rest of the Anglosphere haven't spent the last century and a half sucking America's dick and mimicking American culture.
Yes, "the US was a laughingstock and just like Australia and Canada", what? Latin Americans, Canadians, and Australians have been mimicking American music, media, architecture, and fashion since the 19th century, and popular culture is an American concept. The movies you people have watched are American. The fashions and subcultures you engage in are influenced by American styles, media, and cultural trends. The music you all listen to, that you love to think is your own, is entirely American. You would not have Reggae or Bossa Nova if you didn't have American music genres like Rhythm and Blues, Rock, or Jazz.
What is so special about Latin America? Outside of Mexico, which has some native influence, all of Latin American is a squalid shithole, with scattered, bland high rises and favelas crowding their cities and then a smattering of classical buildings and skyscrapers mimicking an American trend. The music and art Latin America produces is shitty, light, and ephemeral. Compare any music or art Latin America has produced to the likes of Blues, or Rock, or the Ashcan school, Precisionism, Boston Expressionism, the skyscraper, Richardsonian Romanesque, or Beaux-Arts. Compare American movies to Mexican ones. The ugly-ass planned city of Brasilia to the likes of Washington, D.C. Who considers Columbia a cultural leader? Elcano, Brand Finance, Soft Power 30, US News and World, all report the US to be the #1 cultural superpower and soft power in the globe. Latin American countries typically fall #15 or below on such lists. Get a fricking grip.
Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are all commonwealth societies and, get this, they aren't superpowers. America is 10x larger than them, and influences their culture. These countries are notorious for their "cultural cringe" inferiority complex to American culture.
This just isn't even funny. No one can possibly believe this. Comparing the architectural prowess, artistic legacy, or musical innovation and dominance of the American superpower to some shithole, thinly populated British commonwealth that does nothing but copy America located on the other side of the world?
I understand y'all have an anti-American inferiority complex on this board, but holy frick.
>LMFAO, OKAY jealous beaner.
I am an America-hating American, not a beaner.
>Yes, "the US was a laughingstock and just like Australia and Canada", what? Latin Americans, Canadians, and Australians have been mimicking American music, media, architecture, and fashion since the 19th century, and popular culture is an American concept.
Those things are bad. Stick to European culture, mostly from before WW2.
European culture from before WW2 was already mimicking American culture. Try "before the 1880s/90s". American ragtime and piano/folk/blues styles, novelty songs, and musicals, the "Gibson girl" subculture, American literature, art, sculpture, and architecture was already huge in the late 19th century - so America has more than a century of cultural prominence and dominance that no Latin American country has objectively ever had. America has a prominent role in every field of culture, from animation to comics to film and TV to art to fashion to dance to music to architecture to literature to theater...pretending like the colonial-minded, dirt poor Latin American countries and the actually culturally vacant Anglosphere lapdogs are on a level with the US is hilarious. If that's what makes you feel better about yourself.
Europeans are no different and you should stop pretending otherwise. It is actually quite pathetic.
America is the west's cultural hegemon. The shit all flows down to us.
I'm a Eurogay and I agree. Euros are indistinguishable from burgers at this point. We're completely Black personized which is even sadder considering that unlike burgers we had to actually shed our legacy and culture in order to embrace burgerdom. Ironically it's burgers who have a higher chance of being somewhat attached to their Western roots but chronically low IQ prevents them from being anything but a crude mockery. Sad!
US winning WW2 and becoming the global power guaranteed decline in all fields of art. Americans cannot produce anything of artistic merit.
Bullshit tbh. Just because the US took the route it did, that doesn't mean others weren't possible. What if the shitty hippie revolution of the 60s and 70s never happened?
There's a specific connection required for art (and literature) that's been degraded over time. Call it God, call it the intrinsic force of creation, the Logos, the fire of the spirit. It's been vanishing from humanity for a while now.
It comes down to math in the end. Art, as with everything, is finite. There is only a finite way in which you can recombine various artistic components . And the longer people do it over the centuries, the harder it gets to be original as this space of possibilities is exhausted. Concepts in painting such as perspective, abstraction, chiaroscuro have already been invented . And while each invented concept expanded the possibilities of recombination for existing ones, it made it harder to discover new concepts. Ultimately this leads to stagnation as the same ideas get repeated endlessly and it gets harder and harder to be novel.
Novelty is not required to produce beautiful art.
It isn't. But each piece of art has to be at least somewhat different. Otherwise it's just a reproduction. And the best art is both beautiful and novel.
I'm not against yet another landscape painting, but after hundreds of years the idea is tired.
One of the flaws with modern art is sickness of beauty, in the search for a new idea some hack artists have tried to defy beauty as an attempt to say something new. It usually backfires.
And not only that I might add but the human brain and body impose certain constraints on what we can do with art. Technology might enhance it, but even still, we can't have technologies that are incompatible with our brains and bodies.
knowledge economy, no craftsmanship anymore
>What happened from 1920's to around 1960's?
Jews are one of the only groups that contributed to the arts in the US. This says more about Americans than israelites - it's not as if American israelites have been remarkable or even all that good.
>the US represented the peak of (anything)
No.
>No
Uh, yes. There was no country that was doing as much with the styles of the early 20th century, like Art Deco and Streamline, as the US was. Compare the appearance of American cities in the 20th century to the wastelands or British cultural copy-pasting of Australia and Canada, those shitty countries of 2-10 million that had legitimately no culture. Europe was comparatively poor at the time and wasn't innovating in the arts and architecture as much as America was. And its the German Bauhaus movement that created the most artistically vacant designs that we se today.
Typical Europhilic Anti-Americanism. The cope is bad.
Holy shit they literally came at the exact start of the decline. Right at the beginning of modernism and the avant garde. You got any books on this topic?
The relationship between israelites touching anything and that thing then turning to shit is so goddamn consistent that the only true explanation I can think is that they are in bed with Satan. It's one of the most reliable metrics of the validity of spiritual laws that any time a israelite does fricking anything the ultimate effect of it, and probable goal from the outset, is the destruction of something good. The one alternative possibility that does not concede the existence of divinities at play is the idea that the normal baseline mentality for their race is pathological or near-pathological narcissism, but even that might just be a mechanical explanation for an inclination that is really more spiritual.
Culture of Critique series for some general books on hating israelites.
jesus christ
Adoption of fashionable abstract avant guarde shit (bauhaus, dadaism, cubism) divorced art from craft
Since the art itself produced by such movements is shit, the notion came that as long as the abstract is tied to some concept, it is still valid and effective art. That is, the value of the art is less in the art than its concept.
Bar to entry for art drops to the floor as vain rich c**ts looking to 'express themselves' get into art without concern to learning craft, just abstraction
Demand for craft wanes and western art schools stop teaching draftsmanship
Students become teachers and now you have a generation of art tutors who don't know how to draw, much less how to teach others to, but only how to 'express themselves'
Fine arts are kaput and the passionate youngsters are learning to draw off cartoons. We are here now.
America's culture is "its pretty first world up until the exact second you have a major medical crisis, then you are completely fricked"
Read Jameson.
Should have read the jungergay threads.
I think it’s mostly just we’ve run out of things to talk about. Fountain was fun in 1917 but how are you supposed to say that something new is art after you’ve already declared that everything is art?