Are our artistic voices nothing more than a reflection of our times? A mirror of the zeitgeist we all live & die within? Michelangelo wouldn’t have painted ‘Creation’ had he been born today. Perhaps genius would still have manifested within him, but not in the way we recognize it today, and who’s to say it would be recognized as such? Can something be genius if it isn’t recognized?
I know good art when I see it. But when pressed, the argument will never hold for exactly ‘why’ it’s good. One always falls down the rabbit hole of the arbitrary. There’s a haze in the air. What were lies are now truths. What was bad is now good. What was mocked is now glorified. Once our zeitgeist has dissipated and is chronicled in the history books, how it will be defined? As a season of smoke, an amalgam of half meaning, ambiguity and hollowness, or as something deeply, truly human; meaningful. If nothing else, the perceived lack of a creative grounding is liberating. And if there is no definition of what good is then nothing can be bad either. A weight of judgement should be lifted from my chest. It doesn’t feel that way.