Survival of the Most Beautiful Art

07Feb09

Another eery coincidence has occurred in my life. It was only yesterday, while listening to BBC Radio3 (something I listen to a lot because it is not very invasive and it allows me to concentrate on my work; and, not least, because they often play beautiful music!), and really enjoying the sheer brilliance of Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) – that I asked myself: has any music of this standard been produced since? Was the 19th Century the pinnacle of music? Have composers just run out of ideas or lost their direction?

The coincidence was that today I was listening to a BBC Radio 3 programme called Darwin And Music – where Petroc Trelawny was in discussion with Gary Tomlinson, Professor of Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Ian Cross, reader in music and science at Cambridge University and Roderick Swanston of Imperial College. They were discussing the idea that music had peaked with Beethoven – or at least with 19th Century music. They mentioned musicologist Paul Henry Lang (arguably the leading musicologist of the Twentieth Century who produced a seminal work: “Music in Western Civilization” 1941), who lamented the demise of modern music – saying that none of his contemporaries – Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), etc. were as good as previous composers…

But I think there is another evolutionary force in human activities: basically this is not so much survival of the fittest but survival of the most beautiful. That is quality or beauty will survive the longest – the implication being that less beautiful works or works that do not come up to a certain standard will not have the same success at the box office or record sales, and general demand for them will be low. Given the choice between atonal music and 19th Century Romanticism, the latter will win hands down into perpetuity. The less beautiful, or even the non-beautiful (to put it politely) will fall into obscurity – where it belongs.

I think there comes a point when the standard reached by predecessors is so great and requires so much effort and imagination – that would-be successors are in awe, but not awe-inspired. They are simply humbled into defeatism: a feeling that there is no way they can achieve the same quality. Some people’s reaction to this is to try to produce something different: I cannot compete on the same terms so I will try something completely different…

Evolution, as I understand it, is not a gradual and constant “improvement” – somehow defined – but a continuous adaptation to changes. But that is not to imply intention. Evolution is blind. What it boils do to is that if there are changes to the environment (which are always happening due to catastrophic and/or gradual geological phenomena) then those changes may adversely affect the survival of certain species in certain locations with certain physical and psychological attributes. For example, if huge parts of Africa were to turn to a desert the animals have certain choices: if possible move to locations where they are adapted to survive, or nature will whittle out those unadapted – who cannot find food, a mate, shelter.

Random genetic mutations take place all the time in the history of species. However, if, during the aforementioned environmental transition, genetic mutations happen to favour certain individuals – like longer necks, smaller size, longer tongues, or a greater sense of smell of hidden water – then there may be a negative filtering process where the species’ design tends to head in a particular direction. Such biological adaption, however, is not necessarily continuous or beneficial to future generations. An ever-growing neck is only useful as long as the trees are tall. And if the trees disappear and there is only close grazing to be had, then the long neck could be a positive disadvantage…

However, I do think there are some unequivocally good, or universally useful adaptions, and their omnipresence is possibly testimony to this idea. I am of course thinking about the senses of sight, hearing, taste, and touch. Necks can grow and shrink, legs can come and go, wingspan can grow and shrink, size can grow and shrink – as prevalent environmental conditions “dictate”. However, I can imagine no situations where being able to detect one’s environment – to help locate food and mates, avoid potential predators, avoid physical dangers – like not walking off a cliff – I can think of no situations where these senses could be a hindrance. So while many species of animal differ quite considerably, the one thing the vast majority seem to share is the aforementioned senses…

I feel human evolution, where the arts are concerned, is not “natural” in the normal evolutionary sense of the word. Human evolution in the arts is very much pre-meditated and deliberate. But is it? Surely evolution is not about what individual species do in order to try to survive. It is about what history has shown to be successful, and by implication unsuccessful, adaptations – regardless of how those adaptions came about. Some species, like the Horseshoe Crab (Limulus polyphemus), have lived on this planet for hundreds of millions of years with little or no change (hence they are sometimes known as “living fossils”), and they are contemporaries of very new species – like humans – who have only be around for about 5 million years. The human species isn’t necessarily the zenith of evolution on the planet: evolution is neutral with regards newness of species (many new species have come and gone in the course of the Eath’s history), or, if anything, it smiles on the longest surviving and most planet-friendly…

In a similar vein, albeit on a much smaller scale(!), some art and classical music has been around for centuries and there is contemporary art and classical music. Contemporary, from an evolutionary perspective, confers no privilege or status – just chronology. If, and only if, two hundred years from now future generations wish to see or listen to today’s contemporary art – as much as we do today for the Impressionists, the Pre-Raphaelites, the 19th Century Romanticists, the Three B’s, Mozart – only then will be we able to say that today’s contemporary art is as “good” as art of yester-year… I bet my life that this will not happen as a general preference.

Perhaps using the term classical music is defeating in this context – because I am effectively restricting how music might evolve. Perhaps the evolutionary direction music in general has taken is to generally favour the smaller more agile species. Let me explain. Conventional classical music is the blue whale or mammoth in evolutionary terms, requiring months of a composer’s imagination and effort, big orchestras, and are generally big, expensive, projects and a slow creative process. To compete with the great works of the past in the same genre is fantastically difficult. Perhaps music has adapted to smaller more agile units with small groups of individuals and single people, and improvisation. Maybe (classical) music has evolved, or is evolving into pop and jazz music and their numerous incarnations and derivatives. This could be as a result of the dissatisfaction of what conventional classical composers were producing. Maybe not. Maybe a new source of food in the form of radio, records, and television brought opportunities that enabled the smaller musical creatives to survive. Let me be absolutely clear: I am not saying the quality of these latter genres is no good -  nothing of the sort – some of it is in my opinion every bit as good and I think will stand the test of time. The problem for contemporary music posterity is that there is so much of it…

Maybe the equivalent paradigm shift in visual art has been in graphic art, photography, digital art, animation and film. Maybe the old purposes for, or uses of, art have changed – leaving a lot of artists unsure as to what to produce. Many artists in the past had a “brief”. Today’s briefs are more often for things like adverts, product shots, graphic representations, etc. A lot of art today is completely uncommissioned and with a client’s brief. Maye artists are a bit lost?

So the old notions of art may have changed – scale, medium, patronage, client-artist relationship, etc. But the standards by which they should be judged – and whether they will pass the test of time – are the same. It is not enough just to change medium.

If evolution has any long-term direction I would say it is favours archetypes like progressively improving senses, mobility, adaptability, efficiency of converting food to energy, and … beauty.

Filed under: Art Comment, Art Criticism, Art Philosophy   |  2 Comments