Where Have All the Artists Gone?

Yesterday Anthony Esolen was wondering where the artists are. Performing a bit of mental math on the population differences between the Renaissance and today, he concluded we ought to have a lot more Michelangelos, Leonardos, and Raphaels painting and sculpting than we have these days. Where are they? T. M. Moore also asked a similar question this week.

The premise of the question needs exploring--do we in fact have fewer great artists now than in the Renaissance? If they're working in film or TV, they're probably unknown to most of us--we only know a tiny minority of the real artists, just the actors, directors, and producers. Maybe they're expressing their creativity in labs or classrooms, or they're writing exceptionally elegant computer code. Esolen admits the possibility. But he also wonders if "the cultural requirements to produce a Michelangelo are now lacking," such as the apprenticeship system, wherein a young student could learn craftsmanship and art from a master.

It's worth considering, too, whether all cultures are equally equipped to produce greatness. Ours stands out in science, technology, and business; not so much in matters of heart, though. Could this be a result of our predominant mechanistic, materialistic worldview? Could it be that a higher vision is necessary in order to bring out the greatest in art?

Or maybe, as Esolen suggests, there's too much "cultural noise" today:

"I'm also wondering to what extent the very ease with which our works are made public produces so much cultural noise as to block the work of thought."

If he's right, then I suppose I'm contributing to the problem by blogging. There's a sobering thought.

There is indisputably more noise in the culture today. Hundreds of years ago, all music was live music, and great music was probably inaccessible to ordinary people, except in the churches. Who but the nobles could afford a string quartet or an orchestra in their home? How frequently did anyone attend a concert? Did they even have public, non-church concerts during the Renaissance? (My knowledge of music history is failing me on that point.) Today we can hear great music so readily we don't even notice it when we're walking by. We're too busy, too preoccupied, too unaware. Worse than that, most of us don't even know what great music is. We settle for the quick and easy satisfaction of a rock-and-roll or country song, without taking the time or energy to appreciate excellent jazz, classical, or world music. (Some rock music probably also qualifies as great--time will tell--but precious little of what you hear on the radio does.) The music situation in many churches is even grimmer, with repetitious and shallow praise choruses having become too much the norm.

As for written works--poetry, philosophy, theology, and so on--hundreds of years ago, all publishing was slow and expensive. Esolen says,

"The medieval theologians read one another's works and commented upon them, but the communication was necessarily slow, and that meant that only a few people, practically speaking, could comment, and they would comment only after much deliberation.... if they were able to communicate with one another instantly, or if they were all encouraged to publish right away, you never would have produced a Thomas Aquinas."

To be sure, not all art was reserved for the rich and royal. There was folk art of all kinds. Still, perhaps with less publishing, fewer dramas to view, less music available, there was more room for what was truly great to stand out from the rest.

T. M. Moore, for his part, worries about our inability to experience or appreciate beauty:

"I’m talking with my friend who ... has recently become captivated by the notion of beauty: insisting that the drab office assigned to him be livened up with some lovely prints, meditating on biblical teaching about beauty, delighting in Russian-language poems and verses, and longing for someone to talk to about his irrepressible new interest. But his friends and parishioners only stare back at him blankly as he waxes eloquent about beauty. They just don’t get it, and it frustrates him that he cannot lead them to share in his joy. 'Maybe,' one of his friends opined, 'the problem is that we’ve been used to ugliness for so long, that we just don’t understand what beauty is, or why it matters.'
...
"Is this the fate of contemporary American Christians? Have we become so accustomed to the banality and fleeting highs of pop culture that we are smothering any true sense of beauty in our souls? ... Pop culture leaves us elated but unsatisfied, always looking for the next new hit or episode."

He hints at something a lot like what Esolen said, when he writes,

"But Anne Bradstreet [American poet, 1612-1672] knew that art and beauty are not for a 'weak or wounded brain.' Art requires focus and determination; beauty demands attention to detail and a keen understanding of how it must be coaxed into being out of ordinary stuff. A mind that is easily distracted by this, that, and the other will be too weak to pursue liberating the artist within."

Moore has five suggestions--five disciplines, actually--for those who would "liberate the artist within."

• Construct a broad foundation for beauty: choose well what you read, view, and listen to.

• Find an agreeable form for discovering and expressing beauty.

• Plunder the masters: "There is a trajectory for beautiful art, and we should eagerly borrow..."

• Do not take no for an answer when it comes to liberating the artist within.

• Let the creativity flow. Get started, and give it the time it takes.

If enough of us follow his advice, perhaps there will be less cultural noise, more awareness of beauty, more beauty to notice. So if this blog, or any other, is hindering you from taking the time you need to develop your sense of beauty (as well as good thinking), then by all means go do something better!

Follow-up Posts: Where Have All the Artists Gone? Part 2 and Part 3.

Posted: Tue - July 10, 2007 at 11:27 AM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Where Have All the Artists Gone?

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson