>>16146611It's not even about the "style" of art. I am talking about the impact of technology on the notion of art and how it destroyed it.
Take this picture for example. This is not "art." It is a picture. It is an electronic reproduction of a famous work.
The sign of a great work of art is that it has a profound effect on those around it. No one feels anything by looking at this picture. It has no effect on them. In fact, modern people are often confused by the idea of art. They are told they are supposed to experience something when they see this picture or one like it, but they don't, and they don't understand why they don't.
That's because they aren't being exposed to art, some of them never in their entire lives.
The work of art is an object. It is something that has presence. People used to make pilgrimages to great works of art, like a religious person would make a pilgrimage to a holy site. There was a hushed sense of awe when they were in its presence. All that has been eroded by the facility of mechanical, and then electronic, reproduction, which has destroyed the unique "object-ness" of the original art itself.