Trends in art

[vinceconaway]

I'm a musician with some art-intensive hobbies (museums, sight-seeing, and having epic friends), and I've noticed that art often moves in waves of simplicity vs complexity*. To take the most obvious example:

60s music and the folk revival were simple

Progressive rock and disco got complex and excessive in performance

Punk was a rebellion back to simplicity

Hair bands revived complexity and grandeur

Grunge was another reversion to simplicity.

As a medievalist and architecture buff, I've noticed the same pattern in building styles.

Romanesque was simple, Gothic excessive, Renaissance reverted to simple, Baroque revived excess, and Neo-classical more simplicity.

As I'm learning and rehearsing a variety of early music I'm enjoying the pattern once again between ars antiqua, ars nova (and subtilior), early renaissance (simplified rhythm), renaissance polyphony, and baroque.

I've seen similar patterns in fashion and painting, and find the whole thing fascinating.

*this is a deep simplification, of course