Art in decadence?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Tomato is right. What is ‘art’ is and always will be subjective. If it weren’t, everyone would have the same feelings about the same piece of art. For example, which of these renowned sculptures is ‘better’?





They’re vastly different in style, composition, symbolism and medium, and were made four centuries apart.

Here’s the answer: if you think David is better, you’re right. If you think The Helmet Maker’s Once Beautiful Wife is better, you’re right.

Boru

[Gwaithmir]

I've always preferred the Classicist painters. John Willam Godward is my favorite.

[Angrboda]

I think people conflate 'subjective' with 'arbitrary'. Just because something is subjective doesn't mean that there aren't rules, principles, and regularity because minds aren't completely arbitrary, they have natures.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think people conflate 'subjective' with 'arbitrary'.  Just because something is subjective doesn't mean that there aren't rules, principles, and regularity because minds aren't completely arbitrary, they have natures.

I’m not sure i agree that there are ‘rules’ for art. I think art is unique in the respect that is intended to evoke emotion. Of the two sculptures posted above (both of which clearly qualify as art), my preference is strongly for the second one, since David, while as technically impressive as Canby, doesn’t move me. The first time I saw the Rodin sculpture, it literally took my breath away.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

subjective means the rules are complex, the set of influencing factors maybe fuzzy, and outcome difficult to predict with models of manageable scope.   but it is not in principle unpredictable. 

what is perceived as arbitrary betrays existence of underlying rules if outcome is not completely random.

perception of art appears to me to not be purely random, but is in principle predictable however difficult to predict with models of manageable scope it may be in practice.

[Belacqua]

I have been getting into paintings lately, and I am inclined to believe painters nowadays lack the mastery, elegance and symbolism of the masters of old, such as Vermeer.

Perhaps the same can be said about literature, with writers such as Dante still unmatched?

Is this a subjective perception, or can it be objectively proven?

A little bit of a detour here, but I think it's on topic overall....

The term "decadence" has a narrow meaning when applied to literature or painting, in addition to the broader meaning you're using here. For this more specific sense, decadence is what happens when the arts of a culture become playful and unserious and detach themselves from moral concerns. If a novelist writes a book with beautiful prose, about sensuous and provocative events, but without any sense of a moral conscience, this would be decadent. 

This definition was first applied to Latin literature of the late Roman Empire. Apuleius is decadent, while Cicero of Virgil are not. 

I've been working on all this lately because a novel-reading group I operate read Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. This was seen as scandalous and decadent in its time, because it is very much art-for-art's-sake, and we are invited to enjoy the main character's immoral pleasures. He comes to a bad end, but not before we can fantasize a life with unlimited time and money, spent entirely on pleasure. Wilde makes reference to J.K. Huysmans' book A Rebours, so I had the students read this too, as homework. This book is known as the Bible of decadence, since the main character spends his whole time indulging in various exquisite pleasures, some of which are harmful to those around him. Then we read Wilde's Salome, another example. And now we're reading Lolita, which is probably the most provocative of them all for modern people. As you know, Lolita is about a terrible pedophile, but the prose of the book is splendid and beautiful. It tests to the limit Wilde's assertion that books are neither moral nor immoral, only well written or badly written. Lolita is extremely well written, and its main character is extremely immoral. Of course he also comes to a bad end, but his evil career is described in detail with great wit and beauty. 

Now I think literature is swinging back again, away from Wilde's exclusive focus on beauty. Today many readers are morally too offended to read Lolita, and demand that a book or movie have a clear and uplifting moral message. So "political correctness," or #MeToo, or wokeness, or whatever the terms are, are changing the way people read -- or at least how people study literature in college. The Picture of Dorian Gray would require "trigger warnings" on nearly every page. (And for the record I am not against any of these things. Heightened awareness of harm or discrimination in society is good.) 

Anyway, the idea that art's main or only function is to evoke emotion is a product of Romantic-era values. Before those values became dominant, and apparently now that they are ending, the function was different at different times. What Wilde was fighting against in his own time was the prevalent idea that the function of art was moral uplift, edification, and making us into better people by example. It looks as though we are largely returning to these pre-Wilde values. 

As an example, I find nothing in recent Whitney Biennial exhibitions beautiful or elegant at all, but I find a great deal that is morally pure and intended to edify -- or maybe just preach and scold. It may be this shift in emphasis, in part, which is responsible for the change you point to -- mastery is no longer required if one shows one's moral purity.

[arewethereyet]

Art is different things to different people. Not everyone is looking for deep meaning. Can it not be enough to find something moving or beautiful without looking for supposed hidden meaning? As for literature, sometimes people just want to be entertained and don't have to close the book with a revelation. Not every piece of art or literature is meant to be life changing.

Many of the old masters are familiar and appear to be 'better' perhaps because people are used to seeing them, or at least images of them.

I appreciate some old art more for the artist's ability to create what they did with the tools they had at the time. It doesn't mean their work would be something I want to look at every day. I can appreciate the talent without loving the piece.

Sculpture and carvings are interesting to me as I don't have the ability to think through all the steps needed to create something that is 3-D.

Just because a piece has or has been deemed to be an important piece of art doesn't mean it has to appeal to everyone.

I don't see art as being in decline, but rather evolving. That said, the old art is the building block for the new.

[Ranjr]

I've always preferred the Classicist painters. John Willam Godward is my favorite.

That's a beautiful face.  I love the way the marble looks like I could touch it and get the mmmarble feel.  

However, the wall on the left retreats with no perspective, making me feel as if I need to fix it.  And those toes!  What the hell, girl.

[Belacqua]

I have been getting into paintings lately, and I am inclined to believe painters nowadays lack the mastery, elegance and symbolism of the masters of old, such as Vermeer.

Perhaps the same can be said about literature, with writers such as Dante still unmatched?

Is this a subjective perception, or can it be objectively proven?

The arts were very much affected by the Kantian "Copernican Revolution." 

Prior to this change, it was thought that the objects of our perception were unproblematically presented to our consciousness. If we looked carefully, we saw what was there. 

What people thought art was for followed on from this basic epistemology. So for example many people thought that a good artist was one who could very accurately represent the appearance of the object. This is clear from Ancient Greek stories about painters, with the story of Zeuxis' grapes being the most famous illustration. This artist and Parrhasius had a contest to prove who could paint the most realistic picture. Zeuxis painted grapes, and they were so realistic that birds flew down to eat them. Sure that he had won, he tried to lift the curtain that was covering Parrhasius' painting. But it turned out that the curtain was painted. So Zeuxis admitted that Parrhasius had won, because Zeuxis had fooled the birds, but Parrhasius had fooled Zeuxis. 

Anyway, the point is that trompe l'oeil style realism was the goal, at least in this case. 

Styles and goals varied, but it's largely true to say that an artist's goal was to select a worthy subject and to present it as attractively as possible. What they deemed "worthy" of course could vary, but subjects were usually royalty, other elite people who could afford a portrait or who were deemed to deserve one, or religious subjects. They might depict famous battles or inspiring events from history. 

As you know, Kant changed our ideas about how we perceive the world. He taught us that there is no pure mirror-like reflection of the object in the mind, that what we create is an interpretation, with a more or less tenuous relation to the thing-in-itself. At this point people's idea of the artist's role changed. Instead of accuracy being a goal, the individual artist's mental interpretation became the focus. You can see this most clearly in poetry, probably. Before if a poet wrote about flowers, he wrote about characteristics that the flowers have, their symbolism, etc. But when you read Wordsworth you can see that the subject of the poem is not the flower but the poet's reaction to the flower. What it calls up in his emotional world. 

This is how Romanticism got started, and it's still pretty much the framework we're in today. After the change, what became important was not the great quality of the object depicted but the great way in which the artist depicts it. Van Gogh can paint worn out work shoes, and this painting is deemed as important or as beautiful as a Bouguereau Madonna. (Not to everybody of course -- tastes differ -- but the fact that the shoe painting is deemed to be historically important at all is due to this change. 

The same trend extends into the 20th century, when Surrealism makes the activity of the artist's mind the only real subject of the work. And of course real greats like Picasso are all about HOW they paint, not WHAT they paint. Their mind's interpretive style is the subject of the work. 

When we talk about a proposed drop of the arts into decadence, this history is crucial. Before Romanticism, the arts were expected to reflect and celebrate the values of the culture. These were often thought to be transcendent values -- that is, not changeable by fashion, and not the production of the artist himself, but facts about the world. So of course people had likes and dislikes, but these were seen as secondary to the timeless values which the artists strove to show. 

Being a modern guy myself, I am in no way opposed to the Romantic change. I value very highly the unique way of seeing that each artist uses -- often the more unexpected the better. So for example Lucian Freud painted nudes who were not gods or goddesses, but regular people, usually shown in extremely unflattering ways. And he painted them in a way which no one had quite done before. A lot of people are put off by his way of seeing, but there's no denying that as a viewer of nature he has an interpretation which surprises and shocks -- those of us who enjoy the frisson of this shock can admire the extreme attention he has given to seeing the world. 

But you can see the danger that's also inherent in the post-Kant change. If art is no longer supposed to depict those values which society holds to be transcendent, then there is a danger of it falling into mere personal taste. This certainly isn't inevitable -- I can cite good reasons why the idiosyncratic viewpoints of everyone from Gericault to Picasso do in fact embody important, non-personal values. But the expression of values is no longer built in. 

And this leads us to an art world with a very weak foundation. If transcendental values are no longer recognized or depicted, then we really are left with just every-art-lover-for-himself. "I like it" need not be justified and cannot be argued. 

And then, as you can see, we're in the world of consumerism, where we buy it because we like it, and what gets famous is what sells most, and fashions come and go as quickly as they do in clothing. 

When art is no longer expected to do anything other than please the customer, then decadence is inevitable.

[Gwaithmir]

I've always preferred the Classicist painters. John Willam Godward is my favorite.

That's a beautiful face.  I love the way the marble looks like I could touch it and get the mmmarble feel.  

However, the wall on the left retreats with no perspective, making me feel as if I need to fix it.  And those toes!  What the hell, girl.

The top of the wall on the left is peaked, like the roof of a house. That's why it looks odd. Look carefully and you can see a bit of the far side. The girl's toes look a bit large because Godward sometimes used a male model for the hand and foot studies, which he most likely did for this painting.