Jacques Barzun: The Cultural Historian Who Saw Modern Art as a Deliberate Destroyer
Jacques Barzun, Cultural historian and critic (1980)
In a 1980 interview, Jacques Barzun argues that modern artists since 1920 have been purposeful destroyers, using shock and parody to break down artistic expectations built over 500 years. He sees this as a historical obligation at the end of a masterpiece-heavy era, and suggests electronic music might offer the only genuine new path forward.
I think many modern artists have been purposeful destroyers. Through jokes and parodies and shocks -- the whole surrealist movement in painting is a good example, or John Cage in music -- the arts tell us 'you don't listen, you don't see, you're full of notions, you want nothing but copies of the great masterpieces, or derivatives from them: well, we're going to teach you better than that -- by fooling you, by shocking you, by making fun of you as audience.'
- afpx
What a delight to see Barzun's name here. I read From Dawn to Decadence in 2000 when I was young. It was one of the first books of its kind that I read, and it stuck with me all these years because its style was so bizarre to me - unstructured, meandering, erudite, conversational. It connected references of the obscure to the well-known. The wikipedia page notes a review that described his judgments of historical figures as "at best otiose and...[at times] ludicrously banal." And, that makes me laugh. I wish there were more books written that tweaked literary editors. If the 20th century is described as decadent ("Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces"), I describe the 21st century as a climax to platitudinous, bromidic, jejeune.
- Michelangelo11
> The practical world, the business world, has created the "credentials society ," and beginning in the 40s and 50s it became a mania to qualify for a particular line, to have a certificate or a diploma in this, that, or the other thing, -- in many things that are not really subjects at all -- activities in the so-called real world which should be carried on by intelligent people but not necessarily by people who have taken a course. What is too bad is that people have very little faith in the value of intelligence, of general principles.
More relevant than ever with AI, IMO, because AI is such a wonderful multiplier for general intelligence (and broad knowledge), and really capability for abstract thought as such. It allows you to execute very effectively, so if you can define what you went well (a deceptively high bar that depends both on general intelligence and relevant domain knowledge), you can get fast, quality execution.
- emmelaich