Death of the Masterpiece: Everything is beautiful
In Death of the Masterpiece, Istaara Amjad ’28 explores our ever-changing relationship to art in the modern world.
Hushed voices, carefully lit works separated by tastefully blank walls, air-conditioned bliss: the image of the museum is synonymous with the experience and appreciation of art. Within those walls, every facet of the experience is designed to aid your appreciation of the wonders held within. Enter the museum and leave behind your daily drudgery: it is designed to be a liminal space, a setting for a transcendent experience based on the masterpieces held within. This applies not only to art museums, but exhibitions, theatres, and concert halls, from the Louvre to Carnegie Hall.
The art museum rose in popularity during the 18th century, when art criticism and philosophy developed into fields of inquiry alongside ideals about how art should be perceived. Museums present the raison d’être of art as an object of purely aesthetic beauty, shaping the lens with which we, the public, perceive and value art.
Simultaneously, they isolate the work from its context — how or why it was created, the historical or political story it might be trying to tell. Through glass cases and sparse information labels, the viewer is distanced from the works of art, which, as museum curator Benjamin Ives Gilman describes, now “exist for one purpose only: to be looked at as things of beauty.”
At some point, however, the museum lost its magic. Fewer people are watching theater productions, going to classical concerts, or seeing movies in the cinema. Online engagement is on the rise. Think of the artists — oil painters, sculptors, photographers and more — showcasing their process and creations on social media platforms like Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube, or portfolio websites such as Behance.
The internet lures you in with a sense of egalitarianism. There is no stage, no angled lighting, no hush of respect. You are in control. Experiencing art through the medium of the internet can be as sacred or pedestrian as you wish: you may flit your eyes across masterpieces within seconds and scroll past without a second thought. You may listen to a single album on repeat all night. Corporations have been quick to capitalise on this shift. The gap between the theatrical and digital release of films is shortening, and occasionally simultaneous; official live recordings of musical theatre shows, like the 2020 release of “Hamilton” on Disney+, are entering the mainstream; marketing oneself on online platforms is almost a prerequisite for individual artists trying to make a living.
In a way, these are revolutionary changes. They give audiences around the world access to art that was previously barred by a mixture of cost and physical distance. Is this it? Have we finally democratised art? Have we recovered from the forces of classism and cultural elitism that have long plagued our enjoyment of the fundamentally communal enterprise of art?
Not quite.
The digital landscape is not so different from the museum. The internet’s abundance of content and inherent sense of isolation serve the same purpose as the museum’s echoing hallways: distance between the art and its audience. Our language is indicative of our mindset. We vaguely refer to the conglomeration of art, media, discourse and information we come across on the internet as “content” to be “consumed” — not enjoyed, experienced or learned from.
Millions of cinematically edited videos, every film you could think of, heartbreaking prose, countless artists showcasing their best works: reducing our experience of these artworks to “consumption” implies their only value lies in the audience’s satisfaction and entertainment, no matter how passive or shallow it may be. The artist is well and truly dead: it seems art has increasingly little to do with the person who created it, or even the fact that a person made it at all.
Tourist hubs like Italy, Paris and New Orleans attract and fascinate people for the street music, dancing and sense of community found there. They embody a freedom unfamiliar to us; we are mesmerized by our foray into an alternate reality where we can take part in art instead of consuming it.
As artist and academic Simon Nicholson writes, we are raised to believe that “creativity is for the gifted few,” that no activity is worth spending time on unless one is able to master and monetize it. Yet this separation of art from what we perceive as regular life is not a natural one. Rather, it’s emerged as a byproduct of the meritocratic rat race of modern society. Tracing the story of humanity, all the way back to the Lascaux cave paintings from 20,000 years ago, shows that singing, dancing and painting have always been a part of our lives — perhaps the most essential part. Some of the most culturally significant works of art that we know today, like Greek mythology or the Grimms’ fairy tales, have their roots in folk stories: they’ve been passed down orally, rather than being a result of singular creative genius.
Art is our most natural form of expression, and dissociating it from our daily life deprives us of the ability to translate our inner realities — the good, the bad and everything in between. Until we can find a way to stop separating creation from consumption, we will continue to live in the age of pristine and soulless aesthetics, where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.
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