Article Preview
What To Do About the Arts
- Abstract
Arts that lack a particular distinction or nobility of style are often said to be styleless, and the culture is judged to be weak or decadent.
—Meyer Schapiro
“Art for everyone”: anyone regarding that as possible is unaware how “everyone” is constituted and how art is constituted. So here, in the end, art and success will yet again have to part company.
—Arnold Schoenberg
Nobody with a serious or even a mild interest in the arts likes to think he has lived his mature life through a bad or even mediocre period of artistic creation. Yet a strong argument can be made that ours has been an especially bleak time for the arts.
About the Author
Joseph Epstein is a regular contributor to COMMENTARY.
This article is available for purchase to subscribers and for individual purchase
Subscriber Sign In
Not A Subscriber?
