The Collapse of Culture

Coventry Cathedral

Well, that is quite a hefty title and this is only a  short blog post rather than a multi volume academic treatise so I had better start by explaining very briefly what I mean by it. I am talking today quite specifically about the fact that over the last 100 years or so, our artists and architects have stopped producing works which previous centuries would  have recognised as being serious works and, which is perhaps more insidious, the public at large have generally not noticed, or if they have, they have regarded the decline as inevitable and irreversible.  Of course these two facts are closely connected, artists and architects are members of the public and subject to the same prevailing cultural influences; all art is, and always has been, reflective of the social milieu out of which it came. However before taking a closer look at these cultural influences I want to add the further point that a central tenant of the modernist movement, which has become the established and entrenched dominant ideology over the last century, has been that an intellectual divide between artist and public has been not merely acceptable but positively to be sought for and encouraged.

No doubt to some "the collapse of culture" sounds a pretty damning and sweeping statement, so before I go further in trying to dissect why it happened perhaps I had better illustrate that it happened. Ok then, what I am wondering is how we went from this

Paulo Veronese
 

 and this

Giovanni Bellini

to this

Jean-Michel Basquiat

 and this

Cy Twombly

 

 Or, in the field of architecture, how is it that once we produced buildings like these:

A Cambridge College

and now we produce buildings like these:



A Modernist Tower Block 



 

 

I hardly doubt that to a reasonable mind it is obvious that there is a loss there.

 

So how did this collapse come about? Well, it seems to me that the tremendous rate of change at the end of the nineteenth century must have seemed irresistible to those who lived through it. There were huge and rapid social, technological, political and economic changes. People could see and feel their lives change almost year on year as new inventions arrived, more and more people moved into booming cities, the world started shrinking in terms of both trade and tourism, and there is no doubt that many people felt a state of change had become a new mode of life. The world was in flux; old realities and stabilities were being challenged and overthrown in so many areas of life it was perhaps inevitable that young artists should feel that art needed radical change as well.

In addition to this general zeitgeist of restless change there were further factors in the art world which were identified even at the time as encouraging a seeking out of novelty for its own sake. These were, most particularly, the huge growth in exhibitions and private dealerships and the corresponding development of an arts media and professional commetariat. Young artists needed to make a big noise to be heard, and they needed to make it quickly. Sensations had to be made and they can be made more easily by shouting profanities than talking quiet good sense. Dealers and critics were competing to find the next big thing, the Impressionists and others had already eroded the distinction between a finished work and a quick sketch, in short all the conditions were right for an explosion in the amount of art produced, and inevitably in such circumstances getting any kind of art out there was more important than its quality. Thus it suited all involved to create a new environment where "quality" as previously understood was no longer a factor in critical or commercial appreciation.

 

Here we come to the role of the critic and professional opinion former. In previous ages perhaps one or two great men had had the power to influence taste in art, Ruskin being the last such and the first to reach anything like a mass audience. In previous times the power of these people was limited to a very small circle. But at the turn of the twentieth century with mass literacy, an ever expanding class of potential picture buyers and people keen to be educated in the arts their influence grew enormously. I have written in an earlier post of the baleful influence of Roger Fry but he was only the first of a long line of critics who engaged in a cynical attempt to destroy the arts and re-fashion them in their own image.

 

For in truth the great mistake of artists, architects and their literary supporters was to suppose that art could flourish without being aware of its own past. The urge at the time was to break completely with tradition and create a sort of year zero for art and to do this it was necessary to totally subvert all existing standards and traditional criteria for excellence. I should mention at this point that the catastrophe of the First World War cannot be under-estimated. It at once seemed to justify the wholesale rejection of the cultures and societies which had produced it and made reaching back to a time before it unthinkable to the generation who grew up in its shadow.  For five centuries the work of artists such as  Bellini as seen above had been considered a standard for excellence because of the skill with which he manipulated paint, his handling of tones and colour masses, the sensitivity of his drawing, the tenderness of expression and quality of ideas. Now clearly work such as that produced by the early heroes of the modern movement, still less later efforts by the likes of Twombly or Basquiat, could not hold a candle to the old masters judged by those standards so new standards had to be invented. Chief amongst these were meaningless words like "energy" "originality"  (no real artist ever strives after originality) "freshness" and the like. In fact when boiled down the importance of these works was considered to lie in their being unlike works which had gone before.

 

 It is still a commonly expressed idea, that there is value in a work of art just because it looks different from art of previous ages and this is true of architecture too. In fact so firmly has this idea taken root that it is probably impossible for an architect now to propose to build a building for example in the Gothic style. When reference to an historic style is made, as in the  vaguely neo-classical style at Prince Charles' development at Poundbury, both the Prince and his architects received a huge amount of criticism for just this fact; for "looking backwards" or not being "progressive". Never mind that people take pleasure from living in a well proportioned and well constructed house!  From personal experience also I know how much prejudice one has to overcome if one attempts to paint pictures in a style un-influenced by modernism. This may strike some people as an obvious fact, why should a mediaeval or pre-modern style have any relevance to the modern world? but yet what is "relevance" and why should we reject work of real quality simply because previous generations were able to enjoy them as well?

 

This indeed is a poisonous idea, that historic methods and styles which have graced our civilization for centuries are no longer valid merely by the fact of their being historic. It would seem, and in fact in a way, is really so, that a great divide has been erected between the past and the present; a chasm we are discouraged not merely from crossing but even acknowledging. We are told that the "modern" is qualitively different from anything preceeding it, the very phrase "modern art" is a giveaway, why is it not just "art"? The truth is that, in cultural terms, the greatest invention, (the only invention one is tempted to add) of the modern age is the concept of modernity itself, with which catastrophic results the pictures at the top of this post demonstrate.

 

It often strikes me as odd that people are so often keen to marvel at the artistic and architectural wonders of the past and yet seemingly accept that it is no longer possible to produce work of a similar standard. When queuing for a blockbuster show of Titian or Velasquez I am tempted to ask people if they feel angry or cheated that they can not get a similar pleasure by going to a contemporary show, but I suspect many people would not even understand the question. The belief seems to be ingrained that the art of the past is one thing and the art of our time is something else. One goes to the former for pleasure, joy, spiritual uplift, to the latter (if at all) to be "challenged" or "provoked". Quite what is being "challenged" by the way is never made clear, conventional notions of something or other usually, in some banal self referential way that requires a long winded curatorial explanation designed apparently to enlighten but in reality rather to obfuscate.

 

Well, as I often say "thank God for the past!" Can you imagine a world with art and architecture existing only from after the First World War? What a mean- spirited, ugly and depressing world that would be! how childish, narrow and self-absorbed! Culture is an organic growth, it cannot long survive being up-rooted from the past, and this, for a century had been the stated aim of a small but deadly band of theorists and practitioners. We all live with the results but I believe it is the duty of all of us who work at art to try and re-establish the link with history and tradition even if at times it seems hopeless. For surely to let ourselves be cut adrift and spin in an endless whirl of degraded modernist anti art is to accept that western civilization will in future be a thing only to be observed from the outside, as it were, rather than lived and breathed and enjoyed and nourished by in the way that previous generations took for granted.

 

 

Lord Leighton