The Art of Art

If we are looking for a general level of art of serious purpose today, art with profound content supported by significant aesthetics, we will not find it. Contemporary art has failed. If we are satisfied with superficial, artificial art that manipulates aesthetics for empty abstract, decorative effects, then we truly live in a "golden" artistic age because this kind of art is everywhere. The degree of present-day artistic collapse, compared to the height of past …

…the great artists of the past did. They rediscovered the world and their own hearts. Van Gogh and Cezanne will last as great artists, as will Monet, Renoir, and others of the relatively recent past, because they had something serious and important to say, and said it extremely well. Most contemporary artists will not last because they express the superficiality and artifice of the age, unable to tap deeper reservoirs of human feeling and experience.