An interesting circumstance developed along with the increasing cheapness of travel, the cultural high of many western cultures, the peak of the colonization era, and the onset of easily accessible modes of entertainment (instruments that we still use even to today having been invented and perfected throughout the Enlightenment and First Industrial Revolution); the nascence of fame. Fame was something normally limited to a nation’s uppermost heads of state and government, but usually the consciousness of great men was nothing past legend and myth. In order to be remembered, you had to be great.
Tales and lore that a culture is built from are more real than much of reality itself. The impact of stories, and the spiritual, ever-lasting morals, symbolism, and archetypes transcend the immediate entertainment of a story. This is why Aesop’s fables are so timeless. In a way, though they are “fable” they are the very background for which society and perception is constructed. Without story man is a beast groping around in blindness like any other beast. What’s interesting about the popularity of legend and myth is the more timeless they are, the more true they are. Names may change, locations may differ, the anthropomorphistic characters may change, and sometimes even the endings will be softer and nicer so the kids hearing them aren’t terrified. However, the settings, the spiritual tethers of characters, the intentions, the journeys, and the moral points always find a way. Something of the story says something about the society. A society’s tales are what act as a portal to its soul because what happens within is more real than what happens outside.
Fame (in its modern form) really exploded as a meme with Vaudeville talent, carnival shows, freak shows, and the like. Throughout history there has always been a presence of festivals such as Saturnalia, and celebration is always a means for the talented to entertain the affluent. There’s quite a difference in spirit among modern fame and the fame of a locally or even regionally-praised artists, however. Artists have always been rare men of monomaniacal dedication to their art, and generally were so unhealthfully attracted to it that they had no social lives. For Michelangelo was known to sleep in his workboots and clothing in impoverished conditions then go straight back to work. No doubt artists have always had renown, but the artists, sculptors, and composers of the late middle ages all the way to the end of the Romantic Period, whether of noble or upper-class upbringing, the dedication to culture and the church, and the presence of a healthy superego, was encased in all of their art. The rise of art as a means for becoming “famous” was only something of the liberal era - the era of the self (1400s, then 1700s and onward). Art before the Second Industrial Revolution, and especially the First, was not just a means of placing status, but contribution to the betterment of society and culture. When you created, you were contributing to beauty, to good. Resource contribution was not a means of multiplying riches (well, not always), but more so to bring glory to the God on High, to the greatness of the Kingdom, to society. Society itself was in the art, because the culmination of its beauty could not be found without the blessing of God, without the ability for society to develop in such a way that lent the ability to create such beautiful works. Art can only be art when it loves, when it is made of love.
The era of the fifteen minutes of fame, which could be pinpointed somewhere around the rapidly developing global economy during the early Second Industrial Revolution, was what brought an end to fame as a mode to bring honor to society and its people, but to bring pride and money to an individual. The glory was no longer in the hands of the Kingdom, but the man. The rise of film; travelling music, comedy, and play acts; was what saw a commodification of something that was strictly limited to a certain milieu at one point when what was apart of society was society. The parts made a whole, but now, since the rise of the individual, the parts are broken from the whole and some how expected to bud into a whole new artistic shift. This is never seen. The rise of individualistic art has only brought on what seems to be a heat death of culture. If art no longer reflects what is myth, and carries it on through the generations, but instead is there to empower an individual’s prideful sense of “self-worth” (in self-indulgence) then what is this art if just propaganda? It is meant to guide. Marvel films; hedonistic, formulaic music; inoffensive and bland media and products that reflect the blandness of a culture are not art. Likewise, the fame of the modern actor, internet celebrity, political activist is quite telling of this society’s accelerationist tendencies towards self-destruction.
Who leads any artistic movement, anymore? Who is blowing the socks off of anyone anymore? The contribution of resources and capital to art is dismal these days as the focus is on efficient means to entertain the masses with bread and circus, and not sacrifice profit for beauty. This is an all-encompassing observation of all aspects of society as all society is now bland and anti-artistic. It is focused on serving a “market” for a niche thing that hasn’t been exploited, yet. Fame is the ends for which an artist is striving. They are not seeking fame for the sake of fame, but recognition that the beauty they create is so deserved that they are perpetually seeked for! The memetic classics of art history still draw the eye of man hundreds or thousands of years after their creation, whether in architecture, cave paintings, songs, or oil paintings, but the history of modern art is a flash in the pan that garners attention either for how shocking it is, or because it has some tired social commentary we must harken unto.
In this way art no longer feeds people’s spiritual hunger, but acts as a way to feed the artist’s ego. The buyers of the commodified art-piece are no longer fed spiritual food, but the modern artist is fed by society, and he or she never contributes to the spiritual - only the ephemeral. When I say modern art, I just don’t mean modernist art, but art of the modern era. It continuously feeds the hunger for fame, and as the technical processes to achieve such fame become evermore easily-attainable, the mechanics of notability and renown can be achieved by basically anybody. Think of Tiktok as a prime example of this in the last couple years, and for the last several decades, game shows and reality television have done the same. Americans, in particular, have always had the itch to become famous as much of our history is marked with how culturally-influential we are, which really, is just a misnomer - the America of the last half-century will be less remembered than at any point of the Roman Empire in a thousand years from now. The lindy-ness (lind?) of something is what verifies if it is true:
Love thy neighbor. - Jesus Christ
Know your enemy. - Sun Tzu
Necessity is the mother of invention. - Aesop
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. - Aesop
Obviously the most memorable morals and tales are not because the artist or philosopher was seeking for fame and glory. It was for something eternally greater than them. It is not to say that we no longer have this capacity or that the striving for good art no longer exists, but it is most definitely the cause for the death of the artistic movement and man, and why the yearning for culture, community, and love will be the birthplace of artists in the future. If you wish to create art, create a world that breeds good artists. Create a world where a young boy can healthfully endure struggle and healthy masculine endeavors. Create a world where he doesn’t engage the struggles of life as something to hate or mentally check out at, but where he is secure in his ability to learn and prosper; to contribute to the beauty, love, and goodness that God created him for.
Because the fame of modernity doesn’t act as something to cherish the whole, but to exploit a short-term trend, then immediately die. It seems even political and spiritual trends follow this. People speak of this sort of exponentially accelerating news cycle and cultural shifts that have to come to some kind of exploding end. Perhaps the end is a whimper. Fame is not meant for everybody, yet everyone gets that itch scratched at some point. It is a sense of pride that hovers around everyone as they functionally act as their own sovereign states disconnected from the system, yet wholly plugged into it. It’s main character syndrome, and with the diminishing returns of how much somebody can overdose on self-indulgence, society will continue to collapse in on itself spiritually, and only those left pursuing wholesomeness will be able to reengage in artistically spiritual endeavors that will rejuvenate society.
We used to play music as families, and take part in beautifying endeavors. We can and will do it again. It starts, first, with disengagement from what is unwholesome.
“We appreciate beautiful things not for their utility only, but also for what they are in themselves—or more plausibly, for how they appear in themselves.”
Roger Scruton