If we look back one hundred years to the goals and attitudes of artists at that time, we notice considerable differences from today. Artists like Wassily Kandinsky were extremely concerned that their art have a spiritual dimension--he even wrote a book titled Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Many artists around the turn of the century were influenced by the theosophy of Helena Blavatsky. In music, Arnold Schoenberg, though not working from those kind of premises, also took the pursuit of Art with the greatest seriousness and was connected with the artist group Der Blaue Reiter before the First World War (Kandinsky was also a member). All of these artists took their vocation terribly seriously.
The great break with tradition that was Neo-Classicism (in music, not the visual arts) was a step away from the deep profundity of art music up to WWI and we could speculate as to why. But let's take our historical tour further. Looking at visual arts, we see another clearing away of the spiritual fog with the 'pop' art movement. In music, mind you, the post WWII saw the avant-garde and especially the total serialists, trying to reclaim the ground and return music to a high level of seriousness. But at the same time, John Cage and some other Americans were moving in the opposite direction with pieces that were intentionally unserious.
We don't really have the space, nor do you have the patience while I trace the details of music and art history through the 20th century, but I think it is safe to say that there has been an incremental lowering of the level of deep, spiritual profundity over the century. The reasons may have something to do with the horrors of two world wars and a holocaust, but asking why this happened might be best done in a different post. The fact is that it is pretty clear that it did happen. In visual arts we went from this:
to this in less than a century:
In music, from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire:
to John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine:
Now here is where I depart from my usual narrative: I think it is perfectly ok to do contemporary art or music without profundity. Why the heck not? But perhaps it does need to be mentioned that this does not necessarily mean I am calling for manipulative shallow kitsch. There is still good art and bad art. But good art does not have to mean drearily profound art. It can mean art that sparkles, that is witty, that is light-hearted.
7 comments:
Art, and on top, music, is a connexion bridge with transcendance. Without inspiration, no great art is possible. It doesn't mean that it has to be only serious, because having a wide expression scope, but it's substance can't be falsified. The now lowering down of the level in all domains is the reflect of the poisonous materialistic thinking domination, which discards his spiritual ennemies as much possible. It's an obligated passage for our civilization, and we'll have to first exhaust this experimental current before coming into a more balanced life expression. In the meantime, artists are concerned by their duty and should not comply to the mermaid's song. A world without deep art will quickly collapse, and that's what we are experiencing now.
I wish to all a great new year celebration, on the path of beauty!
in resonance with this topic, I'd like to share my latest 7th symphony, just released. It can be listened here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n-KAQ0DmvI&fbclid=IwAR0Uy8v-ypGD4WIHQW7UTFnY48HU_qTyiuvh41AhbZy-k51QhIqqFJy2uXk
Thanks, Eric, for both your thoughtful comment and for the link to your composition, which I will have a listen to.
I kind of agree art does not always have to be profound ... although I'd prefer Jeff Koons was not so prominent a figure in contemporary art. I'd take the comic book art of Steve Ditko or Gil Kane over Koons.
I hadn't heard Short Ride in a Fast Machine Before, although I like Shaker Loops and I liked parts of Nixon in China.
But as not-profound music that has secured a firm place in American musical life goes, Leroy Anderson's instrumental "Sleigh Ride" might be one of the winners of "really not profound" that displays musical art. I still enjoy the original instrumental-only version of the song before lyrics were added.
Yes, I should probably balance this post with another one titled: "But Some Art Needs to Be Profound!"
I'd put it this way, it's okay for art to not be profound as long as you demonstrate that it's possible to make something profound. I'll just pick J. S. Bach as an example, Coffee Cantata at one end, Mass in B minor at the other. Haydn has many triumphantly goofy string quartets but could turn around and compose the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross.
The way my composition teacher explained it to me is that it's fine to make abstract art that is just lines on a canvas once you've acquired craft to do other things but first you need to be able to master landscape, portraiture and the traditional skills so that when you decide you want to "break all the rules" you know why they were developed and how to break those rules in a way that can invite a listener to get where you're going.
As Ian Pace has been blogging for years, his complaint about American new musicology is that they advocate pop music which is not itself the problem he has as much as the deskilling of music education to the point where he's read dissertations and heard presentations by American music scholars who 1) have no languages beyond English in their scholastic toolkit and 2) also clearly don't know enough about the classical music canons they inveigh against to understand that if any musical style has hegemonic influence in the world today it's Anglo-American pop music, not middle Baroque music from Germany, Italy or France.
Very well said, Wenatchee!
When I was a guitar performer, I was amazed to meet a guitarist who had just graduated from a master's degree program in guitar in the US and had never played a Villa-Lobos etude!!
As for musicology, the program at McGill when I was there for a doctorate in musicology demanded that you qualify in two languages other than English and one has to be German. If you don't have an honors bachelor degree then you have to take two graduate seminars in music theory. You also have to take a paleography course in old notations and a research methods seminar. Safe to say that no-one graduates without a thorough grounding.
As for a general lowering of artistic seriousness by artists over the last 120 years I am not sure. I think it was Nietzsche who said teaching the masses to read was the death of letters. In the past the masses were illiterate but now have a basic literacy so their entertainment has a closer approximation to elite art at casual glance. In the past also, their art was local, but with movies and recordings it can be widely transmitted. Apart from literature the arts don’t require much formal education to “appreciate”, just repeated exposure and familiarity for comparisons.
I think the elite society has lost seriousness; that typically occurs when the social elite are lacking in any strong tradition. Otherwise they would be commissioning works and supporting artists as the aristocracy did since they are rich enough. I mean as individuals or at least communities. Bach wrote 200 cantatas because it was a civic requirement. Mass art, even literate mass art, is not concerned with such traditions apart from mere familiarity. (This is why stylistic innovations are often first welcomed by the audience rather than the taste makers.)
In that absence of cultural tradition the constant vulgar but basic energy of the masses then is revealed rather than obscured. When that happens either the arts reflect the existing situation or they adhere to an aesthetic or values that are not part of the culture. Depending on where those non-current aesthetic values are tied, we would label it reactionary or ivory tower or fantasy. If we were to read or view what the masses read or viewed in 1880 or 1900, would it be much different in kind to what is mass entertainment today? But artists to me don’t seem fundamentally different in their orientation now compared to the past. It is the mass public’s ability to enjoy widely distributed mass entertainment that is changing the balance, probably for a long time.
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