In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.
Camille PagliaRead
Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the uncertain future of visual arts compared to thriving performance genres.
Camille Paglia expresses concern for the visual arts, noting a decline over the past four decades despite the success of performance genres like opera, theater, music, and dance. She observes that there has been a lack of significant artistic figures in painting and sculpture since the transformations in art movements during the 1970s, questioning the trajectory of visual art in the contemporary landscape.
Themes
ArtVisual ArtsPerformance GenresFuturePaglia
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the evolution of art, one could reference this quote to highlight the contrast between visual and performance arts.
More from Camille Paglia
All quotes →Every month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.
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Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.
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The male orientation of classical Athens was inseparable from its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.
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We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.
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Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.
Camille PagliaRead
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