The bias of a saeculum towards a specific artform

[naf140230]

Quote:you know its a 4th turning because the culture and values forum is gathering dust.

something's been on my mind for a while. and thats how different saeculums offer great cultural masterpieces in some mediums, but seem to completely fail in others.

for instance, the current cycle will be very well remembered for its music, as well as its movies. however the visual arts that have been made from the 60s onwards is mostly garbage. There are still a couple of living renowned painters, the pop artist David Hockney comes to mind, but his time came and went long ago. I could also name a couple of Australian painters like Peter Booth and Pro Hart, but that may be due to Australia's relatively thin history of any sort of cultural achievement whatsoever

regardless the visual arts of the late 20th century, apart from some notable photographers, will be best remembered for gimmicky stunts like stained bedsheets and sharks in formaldehyde. As i said, it seemed the rot really set in after 50s/60s Pop Art. From that point, the most creatively gifted kids chose to pick up the guitar rather than the paintbrush. There have certainly been good artists, but none that have entered the popular memory, if you're deeply connected with art circles you might know some names, but the average man on the street won't.

But the Jazz age cycle shows a different story. Painting was at its zenith, probably its most socially relevant point since the Rennaisance. From Van Gogh to Pollock we basically see a pattern similar to popular music post WW2: Like Elvis and the early rockers, Impressionists such as Van Gogh never created anything necessarily complex or intentionally offensive, but the mere fact that it just looked so different from all the other art out there caused a public furore. They were told they couldn't paint properly by the older establishment, they weren't allowed to exhibit work, they were outcasts without really trying too hard. As fin-de-siecle Paris made way for the new century, new revolutionaries emerged. The German expressionists such as Kirchner, then Picasso and Braque, and then a crazy splintering of all sorts of artistic factions: futurism, constructivism, vorticism, dada, de-stijl, and so on. After WW1 the idealism turned to cynicism (a number of prominent artists, driven by their nationalist ideals, died in the war). They declared the world absurd, painters like Di-Chirico made great work infected with a social commentary, eery empty landscapes a reflection of the great loss of humanity just suffered. Other artists would come to be influenced by the frenetic energy of Jazz music. But the art started to get abit crazy. Rauschenburg famously did a "reverse-artwork", erasing a completed De-Kooning piece and exhibiting what was basically a blank sheet of paper. This, along with Marcel Duchamp's readymades, is what i consider to have basically lit the fuse that caused the mass calamity that is contemporary art. What began as the free and lively notion "that art can be anything" has left art not even knowing what it is. Judgement, criticism and taste were being murdered. as the 1920s and 1930s progress, there were still some prominent pieces being offered, by the guys who'd been doing it for 30 years as well as with the emergence of the Surrealists (who could be considered a form of 4T escapism), and later the Abstract Expressionists. Dali, Khalo and Pollock are great painters from the GI generation, the Pop-artists that followed them would be late GIs and Silents, but thereafter the well runs dry.

When i was in the states last year one of the lasting impressions were the Diego Rivera murals, usually a tribute to the people of whatever city it was in. They were amazing. Its hard to imagine how a visual artist now would pay such a sentimental tribute to the workers of today. The legacy lives on though, you can hear it every now and again even in common bar talk. some guy makes a doodle on a napkin and says "oh im no Van Gogh". Novels are another prominent legacy from that cycle, it seems many people past say age 65 say they wanted to be writers when they were young, because many of the greatest cultural idols were writers. Obviously technology plays a part in this. the popularity of the novel exploded in the 19th century due to advances in printing and the eventual invention of the typewriter. The aforementioned modernism era in painting was somewhat forced upon by artists because the invention of photography had made redundant the need for realism and accuracy. People wanted to achieve something in paint that the photograph couldn't manage. The popularity of music in the current cycle can be attributed to the emergence of the affordable LP and record player, not to mention the inventions of radio and television. But with the destruction of the music market thanks to online piracy, i have my doubts as to whether the next generation of artists and prophets will take to music as enthusiastically as the silents and boomers did.

I can see this rant is already too long so i'll end it there. other thoughts on this notion?

myk'87's comment on the previous website merits discussion. Here is the URL: http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/showt...ic-artform