What Happened to Art? (Not just about Art)

[Jokatech19]

I was encouraged by a member recently to post again, so I'm just beginning with this topic. I've had several hundred things on my mind lately, but have been more introverted as of late. Among them is what I perceive to be the state of Society and sociology.

I've noticed that appreciation for art has waned greatly among society as a whole over the last decade, and I do have a theory or 2 as to why. I remember when cellphone ringtones were the craze, and everyone had a personalized one, mixing together their favorite songs. Today, you'll notice that virtually no one bothers with that, but rather is sufficient with a generic ringtone that is ultra-annoying to the ears. Whenever asked, in general, people seem to really have no preference in music altogether, or taste at all- just what they believe to be their favorite artist. They usually can't tell you why, on a musical level they like the artist they do. It's usually something unrelated to art at all. Movies and video games seem to have lost a huge amount of drive, and if there is any discussion about a film or game, it's about something generic that has been done endless times.

When I look at combat sports, they seem to have reverted back to gladiator days, with the absence of scientists. Wild sluggers are praised as greats, and the last few artists remaining get no praise.

I think that the world we live in has gotten extremely lazy. People aren't inclined to work or think, nor do they expect much from those who entertain. Less becoming more has taken a bad turn. At work, a coworker of mine was talking about making a hit song in hopes of getting fame. I told him that it isn't the same it was 10 years ago. It used to be possible to make a hit. Now there are more politics in art than art itself. People have become so out of tune with everything, they wouldn't know what good art would look or sound like. What do you think?

[Rakim]

You're just getting older and interpreting your not giving a shit about the new generations of stuff as meaning its not good or doesn't have merit. It happens almost everyone.

Believe it or not the shit from when we were teenagers was just as crappy and the people were just as dumb as they are now. Everything just seemed more fun and interesting because it was new and let's face it, we were dumb. Same goes for the previous generations.

A lot of us are born when our parents are in the type of mindset you seem to be in. Angry about the "current state" of the world of art, they tell tall tales of the good old days and hype up the era they grew up in to a mythological status at a time when your mind is most vulnerable to that kind of malarkey. Then the grandparents jump in and tell you your parents are wrong and what youth should really be like.

I'm not saying we shouldn't respect the past. I love the past, all of my life took place there. I just want everyone one to realize that we're looking at it from Inception-like layers of nostalgia. Starting with the haze of newness and nostalgia for your own youth and then adding another layer of thick illogical fondness for every generation of nostalgic ancestors relating the stories of their generation to wide eyed descendants before us.

It has created an over emphasis on past triumphs and a weird deification of any person or thing from a previous era.
Great things are accomplished during every generation. Its just this weird nostalgia-ception thing we call history that tries to make us think only great things happened during the time of our predecessors. And that our achievements are somehow not as great. Ok now I'm really rambling. What I meant to say was:

No matter what anyone tells you, whatever time it is right now is the very best time to be alive.

[mue 26]

Thanks for posting this Joka, we need stuff like this. Not had time to really read and digest this thread yet, but going from the title of it, and Rakim's first sentence, it seems likely that I'mma agree with Rakim on this. Kinda like Mittz's whole "hip hop is wack now" thing in the hip hop thread. Sorry to be curt, I'll read and write more on this a bit later.

[Jokatech19]

Rakim, I agree to a point with you that it is somewhat perspective related. But to generalize it to an extreme point, to me is like a frog boiling in water. I could never fully agree with the concepts that today's art is just as great as it ever was- in its own way. This generation has lost almost all meaning of the word. And while the generation before us was more appreciative of it of course, at least with the youth of my time it was still alive. In that conception, Miley Cyrus is considered by many to be as great as Nina Simone, and that just isn't fair or true in the slightest. The previous generations knew of some music. Today's generation doesn't even know what a note is.

[UnHoly Bible]

I don't see why it matters. Good artists are gonna make art. Those of us serious about it still have as much access to good art that we always did.

[ys]

You're just getting older and interpreting your not giving a shit about the new generations of stuff as meaning its not good or doesn't have merit. It happens almost everyone.

Believe it or not the shit from when we were teenagers was just as crappy and the people were just as dumb as they are now. Everything just seemed more fun and interesting because it was new and let's face it, we were dumb. Same goes for the previous generations.

I understand your point and it's true that nostalgia can make people talk about the "good old days". Texts from ancient Rome/Greece already talked about dumb, younger generations.

On the other hand, I've read about a measured decline in intelligence worldwide that has been documented for quite a while. As one of the researchers said : why should we expect things to always go forward? Even progress can slow down or even reverse temporarily. Looking at schools they could see a huge difference in level/results and it seems to have slowly declined for a long time with a faster pace around 2000.
This can be extended to art. Researchers compared current pop with older and noticed that the new one literally contained less music and compositional sofistication compared to the 80'ies and earlier. Over here the radio still plays 60'ies to 80'ies songs. Less from the 90'ies and almost never stuff from 2000 and later (except current hits of course).

There are several papers detailing possible causes. Society being too nice so crap art is as valid as a masterpiece. Laziness. Globalization/capitalism (looking for infinite profit) dumbing down. Internet facilitating the spread of dumb ideas faster than ever. Or several controversial studies about "the dumb outbreeding the smart". Modern society leads to educated women having less children, while less educated in general often have more kids and can do so with support from the state.

I think it's laziness plus science/art budgets getting smaller. People marvel at a new smartphone update but just check how fast humanity went from the first flight to standing on the moon. As Neil Degrasse Tyson said : back then people dreamt about the frontier.

By the way, the last possible cause seemed to be quite controversial

Edit : Administration/business types infiltrating music, art, games and science have made these fields more corporate-like than before. This leads to less risk which results in mainstream work. Science needs to produce fast results (it doesn't work like that) or it doesn't get funded. The same for music and games where marketing often wins over art etc.

[St. Elmo's Fire]

I thought along those lines too, but couldn't quite put it into words. The capitalism point, especially. I'm no "anti", but IMO the last five or so years have seen a pretty marked change in penny-pinching by rich corps, at the same time as them and everyone else finds new ways to drag every last £/$/€ out of our pockets. They've always been like that, but the it seems to be accepted a lot more readily now, and often is really obvious, too. Your last point in the edit is spot on, IMO, the "arts" have been gotten a hold of by the shareholders, so they'll do what makes money...

[Jokatech19]

I thought along those lines too, but couldn't quite put it into words. The capitalism point, especially. I'm no "anti", but IMO the last five or so years have seen a pretty marked change in penny-pinching by rich corps, at the same time as them and everyone else finds new ways to drag every last £/$/€ out of our pockets. They've always been like that, but the it seems to be accepted a lot more readily now, and often is really obvious, too. Your last point in the edit is spot on, IMO, the "arts" have been gotten a hold of by the shareholders, so they'll do what makes money...

I remember a documentary such as Zetgeist bringing out that aspect. To a large extent, the government does desire a weak/dumb society, and people are none the wiser. They even go about physical means of achieving that ideal down to FDA approval guidelines. That's why I made the reference to boiling frogs. Frogs will sit and boil to death as long as the water is gradually heated. The bulk of society today is no different. Just ask this thread question in the middle of a random room. That's one of the things that makes me respect the video game industry. It somewhat reveals and repels idiocy. That's why it still hasn't become a staple.

[mue 26]

OK, I've had a good read of this thread now, and yeah, I agree totally with everything Rakim said. Art hasn't really changed; new artists are making new art and keeping it moving, just as every generation has, and there is tons of great new stuff out there. The only thing that has changed is that you've probably become attached to a sound from a previous generation to such an extent that you now fail to keep it moving, and have perhaps blinded yourself to the good current stuff being made. There's nothing wrong with having a preference for music from a previous generation, my favourite time for soul music is probably the 70s and 80s, and I tend prefer sample based hip hop, but with that said, I'd never try and claim that that shit is objectively better than the new shit. I also like to keep my shit moving and I appreciate a lot of what the new cats are doing. I don't want to become a croaky old grandpa type bemoaning the new kids on the block, while at the same time glorifying a past time period with thick rose tinted goggles on. Miss me with that Wynton Marsalis steelo. Because that's what you'll become if you get stuck in the past, you'll become an angry irrational music hater like Wynton Marsalis.

In some ways I think hip hop crystallises the extremes of this kind of then V now attitude. If any type of music is a young persons game, it's hip hop, rappers have unfortunately short shelf lives, and rap fans are notoriously disloyal and fickle when compared to other types music. What this means is that young cats often don't bother getting up on their hip hop history, and most older heads just remain grouchy and refuse to listen to hip hop made past a certain date. Heads tend to just cling to music from whatever era they grew up in, I've met people who claim the music died in 91, 96, 2005, ect, ect. The pattern will just continue. Worst of all are those sad cases who pop up on Youtube and leave comments under 90s hip hop vids saying "I'm 14 and love this real shit, wish I grew up in the 90s, hip hop today is dead". I love that he's discovering artists most now no longer give a shit about, but that aside, this is that nostalgic bullshit Rakim was talking about! What son duke doesn't know, is just how much shit hip hop was made in the 90s too (half arsed preemo and Pete Rock copy cats galore, millions of pretend gangsters spitting weak rhymes, ect) and he also seemingly doesn't know that there is so much good new shit out there. Nostalgia is fucking with the new generation too!

That doesn't mean nothing at all has changed; I think radio and TV airplay is less varied these days when compared to the past, and I also think that the media saturation we have these days does possibly make it harder for sub-cultures to take root. But I don't think anything has happened to art.

[south carmain]

what do you mean what happened to art (I didn't read your long post by the way), it's well and alive just look at this great piece of art soon to unveil in the art capital of the world

http://gawker.com/gay-art-school-studen ... 1451749816

[Jokatech19]

Thanks for all the varied opinions everyone. That's what this thread is about. Mue nice comment. Very in depth and informative. I don't think I agree with Marsalis' theory exactly. Although I'm not entirely sure what it is, although, like him I come from a classical background. However, I will say that the responses here are what I generally expected. When it comes to art, I find it's proportional to standards to a degree. In the majority of mankind's eyes, today's standards, as debased as they clearly are- or so one would think, are even higher than they've ever been. The same line of reasoning tends to creep into thinking that art is progressive today and we are "moving forward." I don't deny that there are artists out there doing new and progressive things with art today- I'm one of them. The difference today is that such artists no longer control the wave. They have become the suppressed minority that everyone else abuses, yet feeds off of. When the mainstream is tapped, it's today's few actual artists that are sampled or used. When we look at rap, I laugh at the thought that it's going someplace. I've been in that industry and watched the fall. The 1 or 2 actual great artists out today aren't from today. You can cling to Kendrick Lamar as some new savior, but the truth is the only thing their lyrics today contain is vulgarity and basic word play. To even compare the content to the standard of the 90's is crazy flat out. This is about what is mainstream- as art no longer is.


It's like boxing. Floyd Mayweather may be the last pure boxer of our time. Everyone hates him now and can't wait until he's gone. But his replacement will be the likes of a Canelo and an Adrien Broner. All of these fighters, are at best, poor man versions of him. But in the name of progress, you'll all say they're just as great. Today's peak artist just gets really good at the basics and then plateaus, because that's all that's expected of them. They've lost the ability to add to that- flavor. If I gave you a master composition right now in 2013, you wouldn't know what to do with it, and you'd scrap it and call the latest 1-chord 2-step superior. It's not a matter of perspective. It's a matter of denial. I'm not a dinosaur who will tell you that everything from back in the day was great- there was crap then. I'm a realist who is one of the few not afraid to admit that the standard has dropped. In school, I made a major of dissecting art. I would always sit with my favorite teacher and read a poet's work. We would explore the psyche of a writer in that moment he wrote. And more so, we would see how heavy his words are and how heavy they will be. If you even attempt to look what you think to be greatness flowing out today, under that light, you will quickly stop yourself short and catch what I've been saying. We live in a world that has just about killed individual thought. That's one of art's key components. In art, you express what you are. If you are glass, you merely reflect. Today everyone looks to their left and right to decide how they feel about something. When you hear hit's today, most times is directly robbed or inspired from a previous classic. Not that ideas have vanished. People just don't bother getting them. I'm not stuck on rappers of an era, I'm stuck on high art. I like art that lasts and will reveal new things to me as the years go on. And if someone comes along that has that spark, the industry today tends to kill it- in the name of progress.

[mue 26]

I don't think I agree with Marsalis' theory exactly. Although I'm not entirely sure what it is, although, like him I come from a classical background

Maybe to him a music hater was a bit harsh, but he's an uber-traditionalist, he was a vocal critic of Miles Davis more experimental latter day work, and he completely dismisses hip hop altogether. I do actually love his love for old music, but the man got trapped in the past.

When we look at rap, I laugh at the thought that it's going someplace. I've been in that industry and watched the fall. The 1 or 2 actual great artists out today aren't from today. You can cling to Kendrick Lamar as some new savior, but the truth is the only thing they lyrics today contain is vulgarity and basic word play. To even compare the content to the standard of the 90's is crazy flat out.

All this talk of the "fall" of rap is exactly the kind of hyperbole I think is total nonsense. For example there's some old conspiracy theory I read a while back that goes along lines of "In 1990 a group of country's most powerful music execs had a large meeting, and decided on a vision for the future in which they all bought stocks in private prisons while simultaneously pushing Gangsta rap to the forefront of popular culture, thus more young black men than ever will get sent to the private prisons and they're profits would be through the roof, while rap turned to vulgar shit". This is unlikely to have ever happened (at least that way), but what I'm trying to show you, is that for a previous generation rap had already "fallen" in the 90s that you laud as the peak of rap. Your no different from those guys. I'm not exactly keen on the majority of current mainstream stuff either, but guys like this make music I find exciting http://mellomusicgroup.bandcamp.com/album/niggas-is-men

Maybe not as prefect on a technical level as your KRS 1s or BDKs in their primes, but then, that's already been done, you can't get any better on that level, why not try something new, and more impressionistic? That's what many of these new cats seem to be doing. And if you do want that 90s style boom bap with a new flavour, there's still good new stuff on that tip out there too, such as people like Rac Marci, Action Bronson, Ka, even Danny Brown, and of course Joey Bada$$. So really, right now there is something out there to please everyone, basically.

the industry today tends to kill it- in the name of progress.

Stop looking towards the "industry" then. Look in more left-field sources, and you'll find plenty of what you want.

[Raithos]

what do you mean what happened to art (I didn't read your long post by the way), it's well and alive just look at this great piece of art soon to unveil in the art capital of the world

http://gawker.com/gay-art-school-studen ... 1451749816

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