Decadence is an intangible and what the visual arts demonstrates repeatedly is that a highpoint is simply a cultural judgement and that all art is in a permanent state of transition often only recognised as such long after the event. What is true is that there are much-quoted socio/cultural high points in the history of art from Greek statuary to the Italian Renaissance to French Impressionism, often centred around the work of one artist at a particular time in their life. In the same way, artists and their work can be seen as transitionary as they pick up the reins of faltering artistic decisions and provide new impetus, but the determination of such status is left to academics who spend their lives looking for patterns. However, artists don’t tend to stand still creatively, and some modern artists were condemned by critics for stepping outside the boundaries of their periods of greatest popularity – Pollock’s return to figurative elements comes to mind. It is unfortunate that art compendiums repeatedly publish only a handful of works deemed as cultural high points because in the wider public perception those works become the be-all and end-all of discussion.
2025 presents a complex landscape of visual art, raising questions about whether it marks a high point of innovation or signals a period of decline and aesthetic decay. Market vitality is often taken as a measure, but it is hardly a measure of anything beyond shifting tastes within moneyed elites and aesthetic acceptance or denial is dependent upon ill-defined parameters of beauty. The question itself is presumptuous and predicated upon seeing art history as linear, centralised in say the Western Tradition to the exclusion of global art forms and subject to entropy. While the Dark Ages stands out as a time of aesthetic decay in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire, such an age is impossible now in that cultural dominance by a civilisation or empire has been usurped by a faceless platform of social media. What could be said is that this time and age is subject to a common denominator of both fecundity and mediocrity which may in itself be a sign of cultural decay but that doesn’t mean that visual artists of worth have stopped producing memorable work. That anyone can designate and promote themselves as an artist is even more problematic.
Perhaps one way of looking at this question comes from examining how much visual art in 2025 continues to grapple with questions of originality and relevance amid rapid technological advancements and globalization. The proliferation of digital media has expanded artistic possibilities dramatically, enabling new forms of expression such as virtual reality installations and NFT-based artworks but there is nothing new about the adoption of new technologies. The shift from fresco to the use of oil paint, the adaption to acrylics, the influence of photographic techniques such as cut off imagery and multiple exposure, the implementation of industrial processes such as screen printing and welding, all mark significant transformations in materials-use and methodologies. However, the assumption that new technologies create better art or more relevant art flies in the face of the brigade of traditionalists still working with paint on canvas and watercolour on paper. They are as much a part of contemporary art [as in, Now] as any innovator.
Contemporary art spans from the late 1960s to the present day and there has probably been more incorporation of new materials and approaches to artistic expression in that time that in the whole of art history but according to art historians that expansion of the vocabulary is not what defines the era. That period of more than fifty years has been characterised by a polarisation of subject matter incorporating societal themes such as gender identity, racial identity, discrimination and political differences. In essence visual art has become a propaganda tool although such subject matter is hardly universal with a proportion of artists still searching for meaning through abstraction.
Does the shift from more grandiose themes such as man’s position in the natural order and humankind’s relation to a spiritual dimension towards more humanist considerations mark a decline? Much depends upon the perceived purpose of art if indeed there can be said to be a purpose. Religious art of the past was aimed squarely at moral imperatives and an obedient populace who were often illiterate. It could be argued that such manipulation was a low point in social terms, if independence of thought, is and was, considered to be anathema to social control. The art produced on behalf of or in the name of the church, is considered some of the most significant in the canon from altar paintings to architecture to sculpture while the art produced by individuals in the 20th century exploring their own identity produced equally significant work. The questioning of social and gender roles in society and the value of politics in determining direction, takes art beyond the individual into more collective territory of a philosophical nature. Whether this manifests as decline is open to question. 2025 will be followed by 2026 and no doubt the same questions will be asked. Artistic relevance and purpose will always be called into question and while the world continues to marvel at the prices paid for art at auction, any condemnations of decadence are more squarely pointed at those who see art solely in monetary terms.