Modernity has posed profound challenges for artists. In this blog, I hope to give some architecture to my thought so you can face the modern challenges without getting overwhelmed. I will argue, though, that there is one main challenge worth extra attention.
The first challenge is knowing how to respond to globalization. Can you imagine four different artists on a stage in rapid succession between English sonnets, German Lieder, Chinese opera, and Hebrew parallelisms? Unless you happen to grow up in a context where you spoke all four languages and had a grasp of their artistic intuitions, this particular event would be largely uninteresting to you. Many artists can feel that their particular art form often falls on deaf ears, or at least ears not trained to understand what they are doing.
Another challenge is the decline of staple artists that everyone would recognize (such as Beethoven or Picasso or Elvis Presley in their respective eras and societies) alongside the rise of much smaller audiences one may get from posting content on social media. Truth be told, even bands and musicians with millions of followers cannot hope to rise to the level of cultural influence that Beethoven or Elvis had in their days. The market on social media is too glutted and too personalized now for that kind of cultural sway. Without a central reference point for artistic making, it becomes harder to create music either in derivation from or polemic with other artists.
Yet another challenge is the sense that artists are more and more divorced from formal structures of society that used to support their work. Schools, governments, and religious institutions, for instance, seldom fund the schooling or commissions that artists need to develop and make a living. The result is that artists either need to work an additional day job, be highly entrepreneurial, or keep up correspondence with an adequate number of personal patrons. Many artists find the burden of these options simply too much and give up on the art career altogether.
A case can be made, though, that the greatest challenge today is the loss of a shared cultural mythology. That is to say, in the western world, there is no longer a symbolic structure of meaning that gives context to our work. This loss of a shared and agreed upon structure of meaning or mythos creates a kind of identity crisis for artists who work with symbols and stories. For this reason, one can easily feel overwhelmed. Let me start by telling the story of how we got here. I believe it will help us more accurately diagnose the multiple causes of this challenge for artists. Then we can examine several paths forward.
A Modern Way of Seeing
In his magisterial book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor helps us understand the modern world. He does so by introducing what he calls a “social imaginary.” A social imaginary is the set of unspoken assumptions that govern how we make sense of the world, similar to how we can turn off the lights in our house and still make our way through it by our intuition of its shape. Taylor’s claim is that our social imaginary has changed, and that this change is what accounts for what he calls a “secular age.” (It also explains the challenge facing artists as I have sketched above, which is of course why I’m talking about it.)
What is this new social imaginary? Taylor refers to it as the “immanent frame.” In this context, immanent means “within”: that is to say, the world can be understood from within itself. For instance, we can understand an individual through psychological analysis, biological makeup, biographical history, and so on. There is no need to immediately appeal to gods or spirits or something outside of a person in order to understand the individual in question. By itself, this analysis does not prove or disprove a spiritual world; but it does make an individual comprehensible from within. In a previous social imaginary, we might more readily understand a person by appealing to forces outside that person (such as gods or spirits). But in the more broadly shared social imaginary of the modern era, we naturally default to making sense of a person by what is inside the individual, such as her psychology or biology. This analysis of the individual is one application of the immanent frame.
Now apply this way of thinking to other spheres—the natural world understood through science, religion understood through sociology, or the ups and downs of commerce understood through economics—and you have powerful tools for understanding the world at large from within. Again, this social imaginary does not in itself prove or disprove the existence of a spiritual or unseen realm, it merely makes the world intelligible from within. It is this very intelligibility of the world from within that makes both belief and unbelief in a transcendent reality intelligible alternatives. Whereas in the past, it was virtually unimaginable for a Byzantine Christian to conceive of the world in any way other than it apparently was—ordered by the Christian God. Similarly, it was virtually impossible for a Muslim from north Africa to conceive of a world as not run by the Muslim God. It seemed that belief in some kind of transcendent god was as obvious as the world in front of them. But with the rise of the new social imaginary, the immanent frame, both belief and unbelief become possible alternatives.
The result of this new social imaginary, where belief or unbelief are legitimate options, results in what Taylor calls the “nova effect.” A nova is an explosion, and in this case the explosion is possibilities of belief. In the past, it was virtually impossible for a Jew, Hindu, or Christian to conceive of being part of another religious-cultural group. We remained starkly foreign and strange to one another, even when living together in a diverse city. But with the new shared social imaginary, many differences between cultures and beliefs become more negotiable. Belief in my particular account of the spiritual world may no longer be necessary. So why not combine what I see as meaningful or advantageous from the diverse groups which surround me? The result is a proliferation of possibilities, where either embracing unbelief or combining elements of diverse faith traditions becomes normal.
An Abundance of Inheritances
Taylor’s book is sprawling and multidimensional. Its full purpose, however, need not concern us here. My interest in bringing up his “immanent frame” is simply to give context for the modern artist’s challenge. As I sketched in the introduction of this essay, modern artists often struggle to create work that is intelligible by the people around them. The immanent frame suggests that it is not simply belief in a particular god that has become optional; it is the entire cultural inheritance of symbols and structures of meaning that has become optional. The result is a soup of cultures and traditions and stories which one may pick up at random to incorporate into yourself and into your art.
This new reality poses daunting challenges for artists. Symbolically speaking, structures of meaning become much more difficult to allude to. If formerly people understood a quick reference to the controlling myths or sacred stories of your homeland, they can no longer be assumed to do so. There is an analogous problem with the technical dimension of our crafts. Where a previous culture might have been able to follow the structural logic of your music, such as sonata form or raga form, they cannot be assumed to do so now. Such “in the know” audiences are smaller groups of people within the larger nova of possibilities. Imagine how much more niche your audience will be if you decide to combine sacred elements of stories from, say, Christian and Hindu traditions, or musical elements from sonata form and raga form.
In the wake of this brave new world, fractured and multifaceted as it is, artists are left in a difficult position. With so many mythic and artistic backgrounds from which to choose, there is no longer an obvious way to make intelligible art. What, then, shall we do? Pedantically explain our particular craft to everyone who listens? Succumb to the pressures of broad appeal such that all reliance on an inheritance to the past is abandoned and we are left to the raw materials of current events for symbolic power? Choose to inherit one (or several) artistic traditions and embrace the inherently narrow range of those who will understand it?
I cannot hope to answer all of these questions at length. But I do believe there are valid and numerous responses to this modern predicament. Laying out these various responses may help you evaluate what path you might take in your own journey. Some of the categories I list below may bleed together; but laying them out in this way may help us discern different dimensions of how artists create in today’s world. While there are probably more options than I list here, I believe there are at least four meaningful responses.
An Artist’s Response
1.) Invent a New Symbolic World
Obviously, creating something completely without precedent is impossible. Nevertheless, some artists have outdone others in their imaginative capacity for creating a new system of symbols and meaning. One clear example is the French composer Olivier Messiaen. In his book The Technique of My Musical Language, he invents a new kind of harmony which he calls “modes of limited transposition.” Additionally, he creates highly original patterns of non-retrogradable rhythms that permeate his works. Moreover, he was fascinated by bird calls and chose to weave this transcribed pieces of nature music into his own compositions. For Messiaen, all of these gestures had deep spiritual significance tied to his Catholic faith. And while the listener would not know what these techniques mean without an explanation, he believed the use of them still produced pleasing musical effects which carried his ascribed meaning even when that meaning was veiled.
Another example of prodigious originality is the author J. R. R. Tolkien. To be clear, Tolkien absolutely did draw from prior mythology. But—and this is the important piece for right now—he did not simply imbibe mythological traditions which he then reworked for his own purposes. Instead, he invented an entire new world, replete with original languages, geography, cosmology, and mythos. He essentially created a remarkably new mythological world which carried its own inner logic and coherence. Subsequent writers came to call this phenomenon “world building.” It certainly has had powerful influence over following generations of writers. Like Messiaen, Tolkien shows how inventing a new symbolic world is a legitimate response to the modern artist’s challenge. In light of modernity’s endless possibilities, why not simply create your own coherent world? Admittedly, some people will find the threshold for entry into a new world tedious; but others will find it exhilarating.
2.) Combine Mythological Inheritances
Rather than choose one cultural or artistic inheritance, you can let those symbolic worlds begin speaking to one another. The Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara does this in his opera Thomas. The work was written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Kalevala, an epic narrative retelling of traditional Finnish mythology. Rather than offering a pure mythological portrayal of the ancient past, however, Rautavaara brings those myths into conversation with Finland’s modern age, when the Bishop Thomas brought Christianity to Finland in the 13th century. Remarkably, neither the old myths nor the modern Christian story become an interpretive center for the opera. In fact, the opera is quite explicit about Bishop Thomas’ deep flaws. Instead, Finland itself becomes the controlling center of gravity that unites the two seemingly disparate symbolic inheritances.
Another example of combining mythological traditions is the painter David Jones. For context, his biography is deeply tied to Wales. In his painting, Trystan ac Essyllt, for instance, he paints a scene from Welsh mythology in which the lovers drink a love potion despite the bride’s impending wedding to a jealous king. But Jones does not merely represent this Welsh myth; rather, he subtly puts the myth within the symbolism of his Catholic faith. The love potion which they share resembles the Christian Eucharist; and the sword from the man’s armor resembles a cross. Evidently for Jones, these mythological portrayals of marriage and sacrifice prefigured in some way Christ’s gift of his own body for his bride the church. In other words, symbolic worlds have been combined, and Jones’ Catholic faith fulfills and interprets the Welsh myth.
3.) Combine Stylistic Traditions
There is a fascinating moment of musical experimentation in the 1960s, when George Harrison from The Beatles began taking sitar lessons from the Indian master of that instrument, Ravi Shankar. Harrison began incorporating the sitar into his Western band sounds. Around that time, Shankar began writing for Western orchestral instruments. While I cannot say I am fully convinced by either musician’s writing in this regard (Harrison’s sitar playing is amateurish, and Shankar’s orchestral writing is unpolished), I do believe the curiosity that both showed is admirable. This mutual cross-pollination eventually led Ravi’s daughter Anoushka Shankar to write music that shows genuine musical fluency in both Western and Eastern idioms at once. That remarkable double fluency would not have been possible had not Harrison and Ravi had the courage to combine disparate musical traditions. In other words, combining stylistic traditions is a live and meaningful possibility for artists.
However, there are dangers with this approach. One obvious danger is ethnocentric absorption of minority traditions. Rather than treating the musical sounds and cultures of various peoples as valuable in their own right, one might simply reach for surface resemblance or gimmicky “new sounds.” There are certainly examples of this kind of cultural imperialism over the course of music history. It is possible, though, to press beneath the surface of a culture’s sounds so as to metabolize its inner logic and absorb it into your own idiom. It is obviously easier to do this if you grew up in two cultural worlds at once (as was the case with Anoushka Shankar). But there are exemplary cases of composers sitting with a non-native musical language long enough that they meaningfully incorporate it into their own language without sounding like parrots or museum curators. The Jewish-American composer Steve Reich, for instance, managed to write for Western ensembles according to the structural logic he absorbed from African and Balinese music.
4.) Make Your Art Self-Referential
When I say self-refernatial, I mean that the art is intelligible because we understand something about the artist. A shallow example might be a song about a movie ticket, which represents a breakup you went through after watching that movie. But there are deeper ways to be self-referential. My explanation of self-referential art connects with the common notion of art as self-expression. The whole idea of art as self-expression goes back to the Romantic period of art, during which the individual artist is lauded as the genius whose internal world is the object of scrutiny. (Look at how tortured I am! you might sarcastically think.) But the Romantic ideal was (and one could argue that the whole idea of art as expression is) much more sophisticated than that. At its best, self-referential artists go down into their lives to express their experiences in a way that others can connect with, and perhaps see their own lives with fresh eyes. The question you might consider asking is, Does the experience I am depicting artistically connect to a larger vision of reality that is worth sharing?
For instance, the composer Saad Haddad is clear in his musical program notes and teaching content about the deeper, autobiographical motivations behind the music he writes. Having grown up as an Arab immigrant in the United States, he sees his combination of traditional Arab music with Western classical music as a way of telling the story of displacement and living between worlds. While his own experience is on display, it is being used as a tool to tap into larger, more universal themes of belonging and identity. Another example is the painter Wassily Kandinsky. On the one hand, one would not understand some of his most famous paintings unless you knew that he was trying to visually display his experience of music through a visual medium. But once you know what he is doing, the paintings become a fascinating exploration of how we individually perceive the abstract nature of the music we hear. His self-referential exploration turns into our own self-exploration.
The Choice is Yours
For better or worse, and often both at once, the immanent frame is the new social reality artists find themselves within. The resultant loss of a shared mythos has produced an abundance of artistic possibilities, leaving many artists either paralyzed by possibility or in despair over how few people will be capable of understanding their unique artistic contributions. While not exhaustive, I hope that the four approaches modern artists have taken in response to the modern problem will be helpful for you as you chart your own course.
Each of the above approaches has its pros and cons. Creating a new symbolic world, for instance, can be exhilarating. It’s hard to deny, though, that it takes enormous time, and finding people patient enough to learn it is yet another challenge. As another option, combining mythic traditions has profound possibilities and can be a genuine reflection of your own multi-dimensional inheritance. But, by default, it will have a smaller audience because of the sophisticated and learned nature of its building blocks. Unsurprisingly, combining stylistic traditions has analogous opportunities and drawbacks, as the richness of the combination will only be fully grasped by the small number of people familiar with your unique combination of traditions. Finally, making your art self-referential puts the burden of explaining your art to its audience. While all the levels above may require this didactic dimension to an extent, self-referential art makes this a necessary part of understanding the work you put in front of people rather than trusting a preexisting symbol or exploiting a certain form of desirable ambiguity.
Given that modern western society no longer shares a given cultural mythos, I believe large-scale artistic influence will wane. That is to say, we no longer live in a time and place where everyone knows the name Ludwig van Beethoven, Elvis Presley, or Pablo Picasso. Instead, we have smaller islands of influence and sway. I am not saying this is good or bad; it’s simply what is. In light of this reality, the responses listed above, while not exhaustive, may be helpful for you as you chart your own course. Specifically, I hope that given the challenges of the immanent frame, 1.) that you will have patience to hold the hand of your audience as you help them understand; and 2.) that you will see the challenge of understanding as an opportunity worth surmounting in light of the rich possibilities opened up by the new world we live in.
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