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6/23/2025, 9:59:09 PM
>>24488438
You can track the decline of Western art from the Renaissance onwards. Michelangelo putting his name on the Pieta is the first sign of trouble. By the time you get to Beethoven things are looking bleak. And before you know it you've got Taylor Swift.
That's not to say there hasn't been plentiful brilliant art along the way, including inventions of entire new mediums (cinema mainly) that have produced superb art, but the overall general decline persists.
If you look at the history of painting from the 14th century onwards you will see by the end of the 19th century a tendency towards abstraction and a disconnection with the world. Soon then you have Picasso and later Andy Warhol. Then you have the kind of stuff that is celebrated amongst art critics today. The fact that the world has been turned into a place of abstraction and relatively, to the point where the very existence of matter and meaning is in question, is reflected in the increasing abstraction and meaninglessness of painting (and other art forms) where irony and homage rule supreme.
The cause of all this? Theological decline starting with the Renaissance, followed by the Reformation, increased by the Enlightenment and put into overdrive in the 20th century. Even though I'm from a Catholic background and have much more respect for Catholicism than basically any form of Protestantism, I still have to say that it's the fault of the Catholic church. The main culprit would probably have to be Aquinas and the proliferation of his theological style which led to an over-intellectualisation of God and made him distant from mankind. From then on it's a very slow and gradual process that eventually leads to where we are today.
You can track the decline of Western art from the Renaissance onwards. Michelangelo putting his name on the Pieta is the first sign of trouble. By the time you get to Beethoven things are looking bleak. And before you know it you've got Taylor Swift.
That's not to say there hasn't been plentiful brilliant art along the way, including inventions of entire new mediums (cinema mainly) that have produced superb art, but the overall general decline persists.
If you look at the history of painting from the 14th century onwards you will see by the end of the 19th century a tendency towards abstraction and a disconnection with the world. Soon then you have Picasso and later Andy Warhol. Then you have the kind of stuff that is celebrated amongst art critics today. The fact that the world has been turned into a place of abstraction and relatively, to the point where the very existence of matter and meaning is in question, is reflected in the increasing abstraction and meaninglessness of painting (and other art forms) where irony and homage rule supreme.
The cause of all this? Theological decline starting with the Renaissance, followed by the Reformation, increased by the Enlightenment and put into overdrive in the 20th century. Even though I'm from a Catholic background and have much more respect for Catholicism than basically any form of Protestantism, I still have to say that it's the fault of the Catholic church. The main culprit would probably have to be Aquinas and the proliferation of his theological style which led to an over-intellectualisation of God and made him distant from mankind. From then on it's a very slow and gradual process that eventually leads to where we are today.
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