Though I can think of few things that are more indulgent and indicative of my insulated economic place in the First World, I spend a lot of time worrying about art’s place in society. Specifically the visual arts, which have a longer history than music and theatre, and thus can illuminate societal trends in a more thorough way.
As someone fundamentally seeking adulation, appropriate credit is often on my mind. Women, glorification, your name ringing down through the ages. Who wouldn’t want to be Picasso? The closest current equivalent: Thomas Kinkade.
Since the vast majority of artists struggle to make a living, what would I do if I were possessed with an extraordinary talent for such things? The answer, sadly, is graphic design and advertising. What modern painting has the cultural resonance of the iPod? An animator for Pixar has more eyes on his work that enter the Met in a year. There is just as much talent as there ever has been, but the idea of the singular artist has passed us by.
This is actually an interesting return to the structure of the arts in the past. Homer was famously unknown, and the religious art of the early millennium was fashioned anonymously in the service of the Church. Vasari and the Renaissance created the idea of the Genius to be worshipped for his unique abilities.
The truly talented were once working anonymously in the service of God, and now they are working anonymously in the service of capitalism. It is the brief period beginning in the Renaissance and ending with the final throes of post-Romanticism and modernism that was the strange time in society.
If I were a smarter person, I would write a nice little book about just this. Published by Cambridge University Press.
