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Lipton’s Journal/February 22, 1955/696: Difference between revisions

Lipton’s Journal/February 22, 1955/696 (view source)

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Those periods in history which mark the advance of reason are periods in which great popular artists appear, and there is rough general agreement on what is art. Periods like today where reason has exhausted itself as a valuable mode of perceiving reality are periods where the coterie artist flourishes, and there is rough general disagreement. It has to be this way, and there is no need to complain.  
Those periods in history which mark the advance of reason are periods in which great popular artists appear, and there is rough general agreement on what is art. Periods like today where reason has exhausted itself as a valuable mode of perceiving reality are periods where the coterie artist flourishes, and there is rough general disagreement. It has to be this way, and there is no need to complain.  


Reason has produced its opposite, special and often exclusive coteries of sensitivity, private languages. The ''lingua franca'' becomes progressively more non-existent. We are in a flourishing decadence, a contractive period. Out of it, if we are not destroyed, will come expansions we can barely glimpse, and new great artists.  
Reason has produced its opposite, special and often exclusive coteries of sensitivity, private languages. The lingua franca becomes progressively more non-existent. We are in a flourishing decadence, a contractive period. Out of it, if we are not destroyed, will come expansions we can barely glimpse, and new great artists.  


But the trend in history—as a natural law of development—is for artists to become progressively less great in relation to the greatness of their audience. We can hardly have an Aeschylus today, nor next century for that matter. Nor probably ever again. And that is to the good. As Malaquais{{LJ:Malaquais}} once said—I quote him haphazardly—“The ultimate aim of art is that man himself become the work of art.”
But the trend in history—as a natural law of development—is for artists to become progressively less great in relation to the greatness of their audience. We can hardly have an Aeschylus today, nor next century for that matter. Nor probably ever again. And that is to the good. As Malaquais{{LJ:Malaquais}} once said—I quote him haphazardly—“The ultimate aim of art is that man himself become the work of art.”
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