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The Mental Life of Modernism: Why Poetry, Painting, and Music Changed at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
An argument that Modernism is a cognitive phenomenon rather than a cultural one.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, poetry, music, and painting all underwent a sea change. Poetry abandoned rhyme and meter; music ceased to be tonally centered; and painting no longer aimed at faithful representation. These artistic developments have been attributed to cultural factors ranging from the Industrial Revolution and the technical innovation of photography to Freudian psychoanalysis. In this book, Samuel Jay Keyser argues that the stylistic innovations of Western modernism reflect not a cultural shift but a cognitive one. Behind modernism is the same cognitive phenomenon that led to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century: the brain coming up against its natural limitations.
Keyser argues that the transformation in poetry, music, and painting (the so-called sister arts) is the result of the abandonment of a natural aesthetic based on a set of rules shared between artist and audience, and that this is virtually the same cognitive shift that occurred when scientists abandoned the mechanical philosophy of the Galilean revolution. The cultural explanations for Modernism may still be relevant, but they are epiphenomenal rather than causal. Artists felt that traditional forms of art had been exhausted, and they began to resort to private formats--Easter eggs with hidden and often inaccessible meaning. Keyser proposes that when artists discarded their natural rule-governed aesthetic, it marked a cognitive shift; general intelligence took over from hardwired proclivity. Artists used a different part of the brain to create, and audiences were forced to play catch up.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, poetry, music, and painting all underwent a sea change. Poetry abandoned rhyme and meter; music ceased to be tonally centered; and painting no longer aimed at faithful representation. These artistic developments have been attributed to cultural factors ranging from the Industrial Revolution and the technical innovation of photography to Freudian psychoanalysis. In this book, Samuel Jay Keyser argues that the stylistic innovations of Western modernism reflect not a cultural shift but a cognitive one. Behind modernism is the same cognitive phenomenon that led to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century: the brain coming up against its natural limitations.
Keyser argues that the transformation in poetry, music, and painting (the so-called sister arts) is the result of the abandonment of a natural aesthetic based on a set of rules shared between artist and audience, and that this is virtually the same cognitive shift that occurred when scientists abandoned the mechanical philosophy of the Galilean revolution. The cultural explanations for Modernism may still be relevant, but they are epiphenomenal rather than causal. Artists felt that traditional forms of art had been exhausted, and they began to resort to private formats--Easter eggs with hidden and often inaccessible meaning. Keyser proposes that when artists discarded their natural rule-governed aesthetic, it marked a cognitive shift; general intelligence took over from hardwired proclivity. Artists used a different part of the brain to create, and audiences were forced to play catch up.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published March 10, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 2, 2020
'Cognitive science emerged in the 1970s when it became apparent that experimental psychology by itself was insufficient to understand the human mind; it needed injections of theory from theoretical computer science and philosophy, together with information about the richness of language from linguistics. Cognitive science itself became overshadowed by neuroscience in the 1990s and artificial intelligence in this decade, but I think those fields will need to overcome their theoretical barrenness and be reintegrated with the study of cognition - mindless neurophysiology and machine learning have each hit walls when it comes to illuminating intelligence.'
Keyser views Pinker's admonition as a warning shot across the bow of artistic intelligence as well. Virtually none of the neuroaesthetic studies he encountered while writing his book made use of a level of mental representation exemplified by rules as a way of characterizing human intelligence, while doing just that has been of revolutionary importance in understanding the ability of human beings to acquire and use language.
###
What caused artists to abandon 'commonsense' art? The answer is contained in a conversation that transpired between Noam Chomsky and Benjamin Boretz, a composer and music theorist:
Chomsky once asked Boretz, 'Why don't you compose Beethoven's Tenth Symphony?'
Boretz replied, 'Because it's too easy. '
###
Chomsky speculating on the exhaustion of the natural aesthetic:
'So maybe the exhaustion of normal cognitive capacities is much broader: science, the arts, every domain that humans had pressed to the limits of ordinary understanding once economic surplus reached the point that at least some groups of humans could be freed from labor to survive and explore the limits of human cognitive capacity - reaching limits at roughly the same time, and then going beyond in exotic ways no longer comprehensible to those not introduces into the arcane genres created.'
###
Like Dante in hell, the audience sorely needs a guide.
Keyser views Pinker's admonition as a warning shot across the bow of artistic intelligence as well. Virtually none of the neuroaesthetic studies he encountered while writing his book made use of a level of mental representation exemplified by rules as a way of characterizing human intelligence, while doing just that has been of revolutionary importance in understanding the ability of human beings to acquire and use language.
###
What caused artists to abandon 'commonsense' art? The answer is contained in a conversation that transpired between Noam Chomsky and Benjamin Boretz, a composer and music theorist:
Chomsky once asked Boretz, 'Why don't you compose Beethoven's Tenth Symphony?'
Boretz replied, 'Because it's too easy. '
###
Chomsky speculating on the exhaustion of the natural aesthetic:
'So maybe the exhaustion of normal cognitive capacities is much broader: science, the arts, every domain that humans had pressed to the limits of ordinary understanding once economic surplus reached the point that at least some groups of humans could be freed from labor to survive and explore the limits of human cognitive capacity - reaching limits at roughly the same time, and then going beyond in exotic ways no longer comprehensible to those not introduces into the arcane genres created.'
###
Like Dante in hell, the audience sorely needs a guide.
September 22, 2021
Absolutely bangin' crescendo of ideas at the end.
November 22, 2024
This book is close to what I was expecting but way more exciting and profound.
The main thesis may or may not be right. What Keyser seeks to show is that across painting, poetry, and music, the possibilities of the older ways of thinking were all exhausted around the same time, giving way to entirely new approaches that nearly drowned the others out. Furthermore, the overriding approaches were not just novel, they followed totally different rules (if you could even call them that).
A different answer is that drug use among a number of those engaged in the arts began around that time. See Mike Jay's excellent "Psychonauts" (Yale U Press, 2023) for this suggestion. Keyser's thesis may still be correct, but drug use could have been an additional factor.
Whether or not Keyser is correct, it's certainly new and intriguing and true enough to inspire new thinking. Better still, the path Keyser takes to establishing his main point takes us through fundamentals of aesthetics in art, music, and poetry. I say fundamentals, but Keyser's way of presenting them is 100% fresh and full of little and big surprises.
The main thesis may or may not be right. What Keyser seeks to show is that across painting, poetry, and music, the possibilities of the older ways of thinking were all exhausted around the same time, giving way to entirely new approaches that nearly drowned the others out. Furthermore, the overriding approaches were not just novel, they followed totally different rules (if you could even call them that).
A different answer is that drug use among a number of those engaged in the arts began around that time. See Mike Jay's excellent "Psychonauts" (Yale U Press, 2023) for this suggestion. Keyser's thesis may still be correct, but drug use could have been an additional factor.
Whether or not Keyser is correct, it's certainly new and intriguing and true enough to inspire new thinking. Better still, the path Keyser takes to establishing his main point takes us through fundamentals of aesthetics in art, music, and poetry. I say fundamentals, but Keyser's way of presenting them is 100% fresh and full of little and big surprises.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews