Progress—it’s a tiresome notion, a day-dreamers potion; it’s a word that “gets a lot of mileage” in political and economics discussions. I don’t want deprive anyone of progress, I just want to know why progress is not part of intellectual dialogues on art, literature and music. Dear God! All this time, and no progress in the arts? Political progress has been won through sacrifice and blood; scientific progress is won by candlelight in laboratories, but the arts? Who dares to speak of progress here? It is blasphemous to suggest that Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Chaucer, Cervantes, Dante, Milton, Mark (of the Gospel) and other masters of literature produced inferior works compared to more recent authors. Furthermore, what fool dares speak of artistic progress when we don’t even have clear criteria for artistic quality? Technological and political criteria for progress are easy enough to define, but the arts are a domain of the blind and deaf.
What then, are we to believe that no qualitative change has been accomplished since the most primeval gibberish? since the first flourishing of folklore? since the first novels? Are we stuck with the West’s Euro-centric belief that the best works of literature, music, and art date from West’s “Golden Age” (to use the term loosely to refer to the last 550 years)? But this would include a variety of works belonging to many different artistic developments or styles: works from Mozart to Schoenberg. Are their works great in their own, unique way, but not qualitatively different? If so, if this repugnant idea is true, I fear artists have suffered much in vain and are merely in the business of producing novelties.
Artists have also fought on political fronts and should therefore enjoy the same confidence in the political path they have and continue to clear. The Greek comedians were perhaps the first to stage performances about the demos, the common people; after them, it remained taboo. Lessing and Hugo caused riots with works about common people; Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was censored. Shakespeare did not dare to write a play about peasants, and had he done otherwise, the peasants themselves might have lost interest. In any case, my point is that the arts have participated in and contributed to the West’s democratic form of political progress.
In addition to the political dimension, and in tandem with it, the arts have seen massive aesthetic developments. But surely, where there is development there is also progress, right? Few bother to ask, and the lack of interest both aestheticians and artists have in developing or at least clarifying basic goals for the arts demonstrates some sort of intellectual shortcoming. Surely change in the arts is not random, and surely we don’t have to settle for that plebeian and democratic notion that variety and artistic plurality is a measure of progress, which would imply that we have triumphed now because today different styles are equally represented in museums. Now, after centuries of prejudice and inequality in museums, Michaelangelo’s painted angels can finally stand toe-to-toe with pre-historic sub-Saharan master-pieces and 20th century achievements and we can finally celebrate the outstanding achievement of our time, that being the widespread appreciation of art from diverse eras and continents, so that, what we have is a form of political equality for the museum. Hoorah for equality.
Of course, we happily distinguish good works from bad works within individual artistic movements; but we hesitate to even dream of a criterion for quality that transcends individual movements. Perhaps we are too humble; perhaps we respect our ancestors too blindly. Still, all politeness aside, I’m fairly certain that if we could measure the pleasure and mental stimulation enjoyed by such modern masters as Hofmann, Thelonius Monk and Joyce, and compared it to the measures enjoyed by Rembrant, Cervantes…
