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ometimes, anything repeated until it becomes an orthodoxy is described as 'classical'. In the 80s 'Classic' was a branding buzzword. The Mac Classic, Coke Classic... What that meant was that, in a diversifying, fragmenting, globalising market there were some brands which were legacies from the age of monolithic non-choice. Plain old Coke might have looked boring alongside Cherry Coke and Ginseng Coke, so you pumped it up with added fetish value by calling it 'Classic'. A nostalgia for the days before choice was used to prop up rusty old brands. It's old, so it must be good. Who needs choice when you have Coke?
It was a bit like that in the Renaissance. Suddenly ancient Greece and Rome were back in fashion. Anything old was good. The equivalent of added value advertising was brought in to back this up. You got pseudo-mathematical demonstrations of the presence in classical architecture of the 'golden section', based on the human form.
Good classical art doesn't need such justifications, just as good modern art doesn't need to convince us that its avant garde really is producing the mainstream art of the future. As long as it's interesting now, that's fine.
What is the classicism of the future? Who knows, but even if it's based on what we're making right now, they'll streamline, idealise and generally fuck with it so much that we won't recognise a thing.
In Bach's later years his eyesight failed -- an occupational hazard for men who spent hours bent over music paper, reading and copying, in an age with poor artificial lighting. Bach boldly risked having an eye operation performed by a travelling quack, who later treated Handel's blindness equally unsuccessfully. He had a stroke after the operation and died July 18, 1750. |
