How art evolves
And how each generation creates new conventions
I studied design in college in Dublin during the seventies punk and post-punk era. It affected my design style, because I liked punk. Glam rock gave early-teen me a sense of identity, and punk rock gave late-teen me a sense of energy.
Many adults, and some hippy or prog rock teens, disliked both styles precisely because they challenged their ideas of what pop music should look and sound like.
Throughout history, some writers, musicians, and visual artists challenge the conventions of their time. Some people like the results, and others don’t. Some new styles persist and become new conventions for new generations to challenge.
Beethoven, Monet, Picasso, and Kandinsky got hostile reactions that would not be out of place on today’s social media. When my parents were children, James Joyce relocated The Odyssey to early twentieth-century Dublin in Ulysses.
When I was a child, Marvel published a Spider-Man story about drug abuse without the US Comics Code’s approval. Today, I love Me First and the Gimme Gimme’s punk takes on gentler pop songs.
The current Odyssey controversy is the most topical example. Why are some people upset that Lupita Nyong’o plays Helen of Troy? The most charitable reason is that a black actress prevents their immersion in the story by disrupting its historical plausibility.
But this casting choice is just the latest example of artists challenging the conventions of their day. It’s part of the process through which art has always evolved.
Movie rebels
It’s fair to assume that Christopher Nolan is consciously challenging a particular convention: that ancient Greek characters should be played by actors who are European-enough looking to plausibly pass as Greek.
He’s not the first to challenge this particular convention. Orson Welles cast Eartha Kitt as Helen of Troy in Time Runs, an experimental 1950 stage show in Paris. But Nolan is the first to do so in a major Hollywood blockbuster.
Is he justified in challenging this convention? Yes, of course, because that is how art evolves. Will his artistic choice be rejected or vindicated or a mix of both? Audiences, and the public, will decide.
Broadly speaking, audiences accepted Mel Gibson as William Wallace, were less convinced by John Wayne as Genghis Khan, and were happy with the casting choices in Hamilton. Nobody was upset that most of the actors playing teens in Grease were actually in their twenties or thirties.
Nolan told the story of Memento backwards, to match the main character’s memory problems. Quentin Tarantino tells his stories in whatever order suits him, mixing sudden gory violence with main characters rambling on about trivia.
Music rebels
Beethoven challenged the classical music of his day, with longer and more complex symphonies and sonatas. He rejected being dependent on the aristocracy and churches as the gatekeepers of music, and led a trend towards freelance musicians.
Blues, Jazz, and Rock and Roll all challenged previous conventions. They each created their own evolving styles, adding to rather than replacing the previous ones. Successful challengers typically create new options for evolving audiences.
David Bowie was a musical chameleon. He started with folk and pop, reinvented himself during the glam rock era as Ziggy Stardust, moved into soul and electronic music, and impressed a new generation by mocking Andy Millman in Extras.
Punk rock is the most obvious challenge to music conventions for my generation. It started in New York with acts like the Ramones and Blondie, then erupted in England where the Sex Pistols and the Clash became the world’s biggest problem for a short while.
Writing rebels
Shakespeare adapted existing writing structures, and invented new words and metaphors. He wrote flawed heroes who switched between comic and serious plots. Audiences loved his work but some establishment writers saw him as vulgar.
Virginia Woolf and James Joyce used a stream-of-consciousness style that some literary purists criticised. Joyce also transformed The Odyssey more than Christopher Nolan has, by relocating it from ancient Greece to early twentieth-century Dublin.
Stan Lee revolutionised comic books by replacing DC’s perfect Batman and Superman with Marvel’s more flawed Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and Avengers. He defied the US Comics Code by publishing a Spider-Man story about drug abuse without its seal of approval.
Salman Rushdie mixed English with Hindi and Urdu, added magical characters to otherwise realistic stories, and challenged Islamist theology. This brought him the Booker Prize for Midnight’s Children and a Fatwa calling for his death for The Satanic Verses.
Art rebels
Three of my favourite artists, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, and Wassily Kandinsky, upended the painting conventions of their generations. Monet was a pioneer of Impressionism, Picasso of Cubism, and Kandisky of Abstract Art.
Art critic Louis Leroy said wallpaper in its embryonic state was more finished than an Monet’s Impression, Sunrise. Contemporary artist Henri Matisse called Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon hideous. Art critic Georg Wolf dismissed Kandinsky and his fellow Munich exhibitors as morphine or hashish addicts.
On a college trip to Paris, I marvelled at the then-new Pompidou Centre, with its futuristic inside-out design. It inspired me to continue with a career involving creativity. Almost half a century later, it’s now closed for renovation and will reopen in 2030.
This is how art evolves. Most artistic experiments are forgotten. But some of yesterday’s rebels become today’s classics. And some of today’s controversies become tomorrow’s conventions. Which will be which? We’ll have to wait and see.