{"id":33087,"date":"2017-08-12T01:00:31","date_gmt":"2017-08-12T05:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33087"},"modified":"2017-08-01T09:01:58","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T13:01:58","slug":"qotd-the-decline-and-fall-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/08\/12\/qotd-the-decline-and-fall-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The decline and fall of art"},"content":{"rendered":"

It also turns out that when that sort of revolutionary who believes in tearing down for its own sake, gets power, all they can do is keep tearing down, until the product manages to be, objectively, both repulsive and boring to any sane person. […] In painting this is very obvious. The shock that doesn\u2019t shock anyone does manage, nonetheless, to turn the normal, sane human being off the \u201cart\u201d being displayed. (Though even there most of it is just boring. Really, the Denver museum of art paid millions for a bunch of twisted together kitchen implements? Without the little card explaining what it is and how it relates to domestic dissatisfaction, that \u201cart\u201d evokes \u201cmy drawer got stuck again.\u201d)<\/p>\n

So this avant garde<\/em> of the past aged without doing more than throwing continuous artistic tantrums at the world that refused to conform to their visions. Some of the early ones, when they still weren\u2019t the establishment were magnificent and are probably art, just because, well, art includes tantrums too. BUT after they became the establishment all they could do was chase the thrill and shock that no longer existed ever further, off the plank of sanity and into the ocean of irrelevance.<\/p>\n

When they realized this \u2014 when the museums emptied of the middle-brow and the print runs fell \u2014 they chased relevance by erecting ever more exacting rules saying \u201cthis you shall not do, that you shall not say, this thing you shall not even think.\u201d This ranges from political correctness to the sort of stultifying mandates on style and manner that are the last gasp of any dying artistic movement. (I\u2019m still sticking my middle finger up at the minimalists and the idiots who think first person is always bad. )<\/p>\n

Which brings us to science fiction. Since science fiction in its heyday was not considered art or literature, it was just\u2026 what people wrote for fun. (Kind of like Shakespeare in his day.) There would be some reflexive classical references, which were the equivalent of Kit Marlowe putting his stage directions in Latin, just to prove his education wasn\u2019t wasted. However, they weren\u2019t exactly following any school.<\/p>\n

Then came\u2026 the deluge. Or at least the \u201cif we destroy all the rules and shock everyone, it will be literature and amazing.\u201d And when they took over the establishment, the same thing followed as in the rest of the art.<\/p>\n

Now\u2026 Now they \u2014 even those marginally younger than I \u2014 are the establishment. They are the authorities still vainly rebelling against an establishment that doesn\u2019t exist, that probably never existed except in their heads. Which is probably why they attract so many people with issues with daddy or teacher or other authority figures who didn\u2019t let them have their bugs and eat them too in childhood. (It also explains a certain fascination with the contents of their metaphorical diaper, now I think about it.) They must be FOREVER the first woman to write non-binary sex, even if it has been done for decades before they were born. They must be forever the most shocking thing Evah! even if what they\u2019re doing was done better and more apropos by their grandparents\u2019 generation. It\u2019s all they have.<\/p>\n

Sarah A. Hoyt, “Avant-Garde”, According to Hoyt<\/em><\/a>, 2015-09-26.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It also turns out that when that sort of revolutionary who believes in tearing down for its own sake, gets power, all they can do is keep tearing down, until the product manages to be, objectively, both repulsive and boring to any sane person. […] In painting this is very obvious. The shock that doesn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,28,41],"tags":[102,86,85,134],"class_list":["post-33087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-media","category-quotations","tag-art","tag-criticism","tag-sf","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8BF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33088,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33087\/revisions\/33088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}