If baroque and mannerism are the characteristic artistic modes of the late stages of a decadent paradigm/societal order, what are the characteristic artistic modes of an emerging paradigm/societal order?
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Null hypothesis. Especially on the very cusp of collapse/renewal
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Replying to @vgr
There is no art in an emerging paradigm/societal order.
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I think had a thread about how near-future post-apocalyptic fiction SF never describes the actual collapse period. That’s an extreme case of the nil hypothesis above that really early stages don’t have an artistic mode.
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Non-null hypothesis to beat
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Replying to @vgr
Classicism / minimalism would be the obvious answer.
A "return to simplicity" from which you can go off and explore in new directions.
Early 20th century modernism when we were last full of ideas and energy.
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Well… there were the Arthurian legends and stuff
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Replying to @vgr
Would not be, for lack of a better phrase, just a chaotic shower of ideas? Like it was after the dark ages.
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In the current round, taking TV as an example, I’d offer The Boys as very late stage baroque of the old artistic order (extreme superhero satire) and Station Eleven as an example of the new (genuinely new plot elements, not tropes resting heavily on established stories).
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🤔 “rubble art”?
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Replying to @vgr
How are we categorizing e.g. Dada here? Very much a break with that baroque tradition, but also unavoidably an entwined reaction to it and to the breakdown of the order that produced it. Is that art for a new order, or just demolitions work on the old?
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The answer I’m leaning towards is whatever mode the frontier tall tale represents… the ephemeral parts of Mark Twain for eg, not his main body of work
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Cringe seems to span the chasm between decadent old and earnest new with a clumsiness that is aware of both at once 🤔
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Replying to
Classicism / minimalism would be the obvious answer.
A "return to simplicity" from which you can go off and explore in new directions.
Early 20th century modernism when we were last full of ideas and energy.
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