The end of art

The ever more furious search for new idiom, new artistic language, new style evident in art since the beginning of the nineteenth century reflects perhaps the fact that so much excellent art created in the past survives that it is ever harder to create works which are genuinely novel which yet match their predecessors in excellence. The audience, with their limited time, stand before a choice: should we listen to an entirely new opera by this new up-and-coming star, or should we listen to the old tried and true Incoronazzione di Poppea all over again? Somehow, increasingly, the answer seems the latter. Perhaps we have come to the end of art? Perhaps we have said everything that can be said? That is Hesse's suggestion in The Glass Bead Game: that we should stop trying to make new works and just juggle various pieces of the past.