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I was browsing my usual conservative blogs last week when I ran across an article which greatly impacted my thinking and brought together something I have always had in the back of my mind when I manage to hit an art museum and which probably goes a long way in explaining why I hate modern art so much (being a Classical music enthusiast). Like the museum goers in his article, I can't seem to get out of a modern art exhibit fast enough. Chet Richards puts a name to what went "wrong" in art at the turn of the 19th & 20th centuries and which in my opinion hastened the demise of strict academic training and the academy system which supported it. I thought I would share the article with you as food for thought.
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(Source: Chet Richards, American Thinker, March 9, 2014)
Dissonance, Harmony, and American Culture
For many years I had a much older
friend. My friend was highly intelligent and musically cultured, but he
had an odd quirk: He listened to Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal, and highly
dissonant, music for pleasure. My friend maintained that this music was
the epitome of beauty and that the philistine world would eventually see that
beauty as he saw it. Classical harmonious music was hopelessly obsolete
and banal.
Then, one day, my friend was exposed
to Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending.” Tears in his eyes he admitted
that he had never imagined something could be so transcendently
exquisite. With this, his mind newly opened, he began a deep reevaluation
of why the great musical classics were indeed classics.
I was not greatly surprised at his
emotional epiphany. After all, like myself, my friend was a product of
U.C. Berkeley. There, my professor in the music history class was openly
scornful of twentieth-century attempts to maintain the traditions of tonal
music. Music had to break free of such straitjacket restrictions.
The music composition majors did not
agree. In order to survive in the music department, the students were
constrained to write only atonal music – the more dissonant the better.
The students hated this injunction and went on strike. This strike
preceded the famous Free Speech Movement but it had its impact on that later
student unrest. The music faculty caved and reluctantly allowed tonal
music to be a student’s thesis.
Inspired by the rebellion of the
music students the art students similarly went on strike -- successfully.
They had been forbidden to paint representational pictures. Students who
wanted to do that should take up architecture, not fine art.
Change of scene: Recently the National Gallery of Art
in Washington D.C. had an amazing exhibit of the works of Albrecht Durer, the
Renaissance master. The walls were jam packed with masterpiece after
masterpiece. After two floors of these treasures one was ushered out into
a room of modern “masterpieces.” I put quotes around the description of
these works of Picasso and Braque because of the visible reaction of people as
they transitioned from the Durer exhibit into this new room. I stood and
watched the migrating people for awhile. For almost all, their reaction
was the same as mine had been: repulsion at the ugliness and a desire to
leave the area as quickly as possible.
What is going on? Why the
visceral reaction of sophisticated people to the contrast between Durer and the
modernists? Why such totalitarian behavior on the part of a world class
liberal arts faculty? The answer lies in the fact that the intellectual world
of our era has been seduced by a fashion that had taken hold early in the
twentieth century.
What is this oddly seductive
idea? It is the notion that human beings are born as blank slates. That
is, humans have no preprogrammed behavioral and emotional inclinations.
If humans are indeed born blank then they can be programmed in any way that
society deems appropriate. This idea fit perfectly with a certain brand of
radical politics. If people start out as blank slates, then a utopian
socialist society of true equality and happiness can be created by leaders of
great wisdom. There is a busybody arrogance in this kind of thinking
(guess who the proposed leaders will be).
Does this sound Marxist? Well,
it is. Am I being judgmental, am I being sarcastic? You bet I
am! Is this idea obsolete? It should be, but, within the walls of
Academia and the trenches of Progressive Politics, the idea still rings with
powerful echoes.
Actually, many scientific studies
have developed convincing data which should have put this idea to bed long
ago. Most notable are the identical twin studies. Such twins,
reared separately, and with no mutual contact, are usually remarkably similar
in behavior. Conversely, adopted children, genetically different, but raised
in the same family and environment, turn out very different.
Then, too, there are wide variances
in intelligence and talents. Some things that are easy for one person are
impossible for someone else. That is obvious. And yet, the very
idea is bitterly reviled by many people who regard themselves as
intellectuals. Nonetheless, we all have practical experience with the
idea that humans are not entirely the product of their environment. Let
us consider a couple of examples.
Four decades ago I was on an
expedition into a little explored region of Africa. There, we encountered
a tribe which was completely unknown to the outside world and which knew
nothing of that larger world. This tribe was pre Neolithic. They
had successfully domesticated bees and had a very primitive kind of
agriculture. But the evidence was that they did not fully understand the
connection between seeds and plant growth. It was some kind of magic.
So, what happened when we, with
twelve thousand years of further cultural development, came in contact with
these Paleolithic people – with no spoken language or technology in
common? Actually, we all got along just fine. Our body language
turned out to be the same. Our sense of propriety -- do’s and don’ts --
were the same. And, surprisingly, there was a lot of communication amid
the mutual laughter. Tell me again about blank slates.
The second, more contemporary, area
where the blank slate concept has been extensively tested is in the
arts. If people are indeed completely malleable then they can be trained
to love any kind of art. With this in mind, composers started creating
atonal and highly dissonant music. Audiences hated it. And they
still do – despite the pressure to conform to modern fashion.
The world of painting went through a
similar period of experimentation with the idea of full human
programmability. Representation was deliberately broken down into
complete abstraction. That’s okay -- all art is, to a greater or lesser
degree, abstract. And sometimes fully abstract art can be profound, or
entertaining. Witness Mark Rothko’s emulation of the vast spaces of the
American West. Or, the delights of Kandinski’s whimsical kaleidoscopes.
Unfortunately, people being what
they are, most of these modernist experiments failed. The results were
ugly, or incomprehensible. If you have any doubt about this just walk
into any modern art museum and observe what is on the floor and the walls. The
Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum provides many excellent demonstrations of the
ugliness of much contemporary art. So also are Francis Bacon’s portraits
of his patrons as decomposing corpses. Then, too, there are scribbles
pretending to be art and intended as a deliberate insult to the masses.
In what was probably a childish
reaction to the popular rejection of the new art, Progressives converted these
artistic “experiments” into instruments of political aggression. Ugliness was
deliberately promoted as a perverted positive value. Its purpose was made clear
to me one evening, long ago. It was at a Hollywood party that I chanced
to chat with a film composer. I thought I understood the uses of
atonality in film scores but, to confirm my suspicions, I asked the composer if
he used those techniques. He did, but sparingly. He used them to
create tension, disorientation, to induce depression.
Induced depression. That is what is
going on in much of today’s popular music, and the other arts. A lethal attack
on our nation does not have to be military in nature. It can come through
the destruction of our culture and our morale. Really listen to
contemporary popular music. It has split into two incompatible
strains.
On the one hand we have brutal,
heavy and highly dissonant music – often a type of monotonic chanting to
pounding rhythms. The words are those of violence and despair. This
is music that is deliberately intended to create depression and a loss of
morale. This music is full of hate, but it is seductive to immature minds
that are still subject to peer pressure. I live in a deep blue state and
this type of music is all around me.
On the other hand we have newly
composed, and beautifully performed, lyrical songs – some of them religious,
some of them Country, some of them just plain lovely. This type of music
is popular in many parts of the nation, and outside of the cities in this
state, as well. As it was when I was young, people in those other parts
of the country, but no longer in this, still sing – together and by themselves.
Which of these conflicting cultures
will win out? Beauty, of course. I leave you with this: About
five thousand years ago a flute was deposited in an Egyptian tomb. This
now fragile instrument was carefully replicated in modern wood. When
played, this replica, to everyone’s surprise, produced our modern harmonies and
could fit nicely in a modern orchestra. Really, it should not have been a
surprise. Our musical scale is derived from the harmonics of a string and
the very ancient Egyptians had stringed instruments. But there is a
deeper message: The harmonics of strings and the harmonies that this
instrument produced are, for unknown reasons, tuned to something that is deep
within us. Triads are harmonious, closer intervals are dissonant.
We are not blank slates. Some sounds, some images, reach something primal
within us. We find them beautiful. Art which resonates with those
primal human elements will survive and flourish – and so will the associated
culture. Attacks on us by Progressives, through the arts, will have
little impact in the long run. We will survive quite nicely, thank you!
