↪ssu There hasn’t been a progression in high art particularly, just an expansion into the depiction and expression of subjects and ideas that weren’t previously represented, for whatever reason, in the medium. — Punshhh

If you’re going to argue that, you may as well add that there hasn’t been a progression in science and technology either.

I don't disagree with the general judgement, there was a very real decline (Europe's population plunged by more than a fifth or even a fourth and stayed down), but the pictures are sort of cherry picking. The art of the north was in ways more primitive, but then Byzantium retained influence in the West well into the "Dark Ages" and had no such collapse. There are medieval wooden painted statues and stonework that are more lifelike, in some ways more similar to Greek statues (see below). The shift in painting is partially stylistic (e.g. typological, which is why faces and bodies exactly mirror themselves on both sides). You see this even in the Eastern Roman Empire where there was no collapse.

This is not to say there wasn't a very real loss of knowledge. Civic engineering projects like the Roman roads and aqueducts arguably wouldn't be matched for 1,300 years, or at least 1,150. At the same time, the Byzantines erected churches that arguably best the great temples of antiquity during the "Dark Ages," and even when the Latin West was still culturally and economically backwards, its ability to dedicate a high chunk of GDP to cathedrals for generation after generation of construction (many spanning centuries), led to Gothic masterpieces that bested anything from antiquity or the Christian East.

It should be noted too that progress and regression is not unidirectional. Europe today has great difficulty maintaining its great cathedrals (or say, rebuilding Notre Dame) because the skills required are almost extinct. There have been similar issues even in relatively short timespans, like highly classified military technology becoming "lostech" that no one knows how to maintain or recreate (e.g. the US nuclear modernization program's struggles, or efforts to return to the moon). This is actually a fairly common problem in the industrial sector, and it's also been a huge factor in Russia's inability to replace war losses.

So then, we might also consider MacIntyre's thesis about a similar collapse in an understanding of ethics, or an arguably similar move with metaphysics.Piotr Jaroszyński (along with many others) makes this point re a sort of degradation in metaphysics through Scotus, Ockham, and Suarez's failure to understand the "act of existence" and high scholasticism. The result is the rise of idealism during the Enlightenment, best represented in Berkeley, who is in some ways putting forth a much more simplistic, fun house mirror, badly degenerated Aristotlianism/Thomism. This carriers on from there, for instance Heidegger's main model for criticism was Saurez, something Gadamer and the Thomists have challenged him on as leading to a major misrepresentation in the historical dimension. You can see echoes like this in other places, e.g. Deleuze's consideration of substance vis-á-vis Spinoza, when the conception of "substance" had arguably already come to collapse and conflate multiple distinct notions in problematic ways.

Hence, I don't find this sort of thesis implausible in some sense. I'm no expert, but I've read a lot of Reformation Era German and English texts and they are in some ways a great step back from The Cloud of Unknowing or Meister Eckhart. The printing press led to an explosion in creativity but also perhaps a sort of democratization and reduction in signal to noise ratio that was corrosive, especially when paired with the explosive politics of the era, which tended towards polemic and radicalism.







I am not sure the precise dates here, since the cathedrals span 1000-1400 in construction, but they appear to mostly be from the 11-1200s. In literature too, you have Dante, Chaucer, etc., although obviously the Renaissance brought a lot of great literature too. It is true that "dark age" literature tends to be more "primary epic," the original writing down of past oral epics, more akin to the Iliad than the Aeneid.

IIRC, the term Renaissance is a 19th century invention. I wouldn't deny it as a particular historical moment, but there was definitely a political and theological interest in making the dawn of humanism the end of a "dark age," when in reality the High Middle Ages already represented a period of rapid advances in many areas and the early-modern period perhaps a regression in some. You can see this tension when people want to reach all the way back to make Dante and Giotto "Renaissance" figures. But Dante in particular is distinctively in line with the High Middle Ages and High Scholasticism.

Likewise, in at least military technology, the West continued to develop, and in some ways outpaced the East by a meaningful degree.

Japan is another interesting example because there an intentional stagnation in technological and economic development did not stop cultural and artistic development. And indeed, plenty of scholars argue that the advances in culture were precisely why it was able to resist colonization and rapidly modernize, going for backwards even for the region to one of the Great Powers, within a span of a lifetime.

Culminating in the radicalism of modern art and now in the post modern era, High art has died. Ravaged and crucified by the modern and post modernists. — Punshhh

I wouldn't say that. Simply after the technique was basically universal, which any art school could teach, then the focus was simply to have other techniques than photorealism. That in the end you had modern art isn't at all a death of high art.

We should remember that Picasso painted also this, when he was still a child:



Or this, a portrait of his mother:


Hence we can assume if Pablo Picasso have lived Centuries earlier and he would have been able to follow a career of a painter, he would have also then been an able master.

To assume that once you have modern art that high art has died or degenerated is something that the Nazis were eager in believing. Personally I don't agree with them.

The Middle Ages and the Renaissance are categories encompassing many forms of art, including literature, poetry, architecture and music. Given the fact that Gothic architecture and polyphonic music were both born in the high Middle Ages, it is difficult to justify the claim that art as a whole ‘had fallen back’ during that period. — Joshs

Gothic churces are indeed awesome, yet what is totally obvious is that a feudal society simply doesn't employ artists as much as a more prosperous society that enjoys international trade and a high level of job specialization.

When people talk about the death of art I don't think they tend to mean Picasso, but rather stuff like human excrement or menstrual blood thrown at a canvas with a paragraph on how it's attacking capitalism, the patriarchy, etc. attached. This might be provocative once, but as a trend it starts to look very "emperor's new clothes-ish."

That said, I am a great appreciator of contemporary art museums and I think the frequency of such work is vastly overblown. There is a lot of good stuff out there that is very creative. However, it is true that a lot of this very creative stuff also has a seemingly obligatory paragraph about capitalism or patriarchy attached to it, and that does seem to be a bit of a straight jacket on much (but hardly all) contemporary art. Likewise, in drama there is a move towards the more interactive, self-guided experience ("Sleep No More" being the big example).

yet what is totally obvious is that a feudal society simply doesn't employ artists as much as a more prosperous society that enjoys international trade and a high level of job specialization.

I'm not sure if this is obvious. The work of artists and artisans tends to get replaced by mass production, guilds lose their political clout, and cottage industries go extinct. Museums will often recreate old interior decor and what you have is spaces, even middle class spaces, covered in handcrafted art, furniture itself often being decorative. When you walk around Pompeii, the interiors are floor to ceiling art. Today, the vast majority of art hanging on walls, rugs, furniture, clothing, etc. is mass produced, which of course includes a design element, but it is one design for thousands of copies. The only analogous spaces today tend to be the interiors of some types of church or temple.

Which is partly to say, Marx certainly wasn't entirely wrong about the alienation from labor brought about by industrialization, and there is definitely a tendency in modern culture to equate value with the ability to generate volume that is at odds with the idea of beauty as the market of quality for functional art. Some cultures such as Japan seem to have fallen for this a little less hard.




Likewise, it's only through protectionism that industries like France's artisanal bakeries and cafes survive.

This is not to say there wasn't a very real loss of knowledge. Civic engineering projects like the Roman roads and aqueducts arguably wouldn't be matched for 1,300 years, or at least 1,150. At the same time, the Byzantines erected churches that arguably best the great temples of antiquity during the "Dark Ages," and even when the Latin West was still culturally and economically backwards, its ability to dedicate a high chunk of GDP to cathedrals for generation after generation of construction (many spanning centuries), led to Gothic masterpieces that bested anything from antiquity or the Christian East. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What is interesting that both in the fall of Rome and the fall of Constantinople you have in both cases a huge logistical disruption of simply there being the incapability of feeding a huge metropolis. With Byzantium it was losing Egypt to the Arabs. After that the agriculture in the Balkans couldn't sustain a huge city as Constantinople had been. When the Ottomans finally took over Constantinople, it was a pale image of a city what it had been before with fields inside the city. Something like Detroit, perhaps.

I always love to put this graph up just to show the long term effects of when "All roads lead to Rome" wasn't anymore reality and how long it took for modern Rome to grow past it's former self in Antiquity (even if this graph talks about Istanbul, not Constantinople).

It should be noted too that progress and regression is not unidirectional. Europe today has great difficulty maintaining its great cathedrals (or say, rebuilding Notre Dame) because the skills required are almost extinct. There have been similar issues even in relatively short timespans, like highly classified military technology becoming "lostech" that no one knows how to maintain or recreate (e.g. the US nuclear modernization program's struggles, or efforts to return to the moon). This is actually a fairly common problem in the industrial sector, and it's also been a huge factor in Russia's inability to replace war losses. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree totally with this. Once some technology is replaced, the techonology does vanish if there aren't some historians or collectors that uphold the knowledge of the technology once the old engineers and users die. Fortunately in many things we do respect our earlier technology so much that have the understanding around. And hopefully that doesn't happen with things like art.

One great example to us is cars. The modern version of various computers on wheels run by batteries is somewhat easy to use. At least for us, who use computers daily. Cars 50 or 60 years old are easy for us also, but when we look at the first cars like the Ford T-model, many people would have severe difficulties in starting the damn thing without instructions (given here aptly by AI):

Here's a more detailed breakdown:
1. Prepare the car:
Engage the parking brake: This locks the transmission and prevents the car from rolling.
Turn the ignition switch off: This is crucial for safety during hand cranking.
2. Locate the hand crank:
The crank is a long, metal handle located at the front of the car.
3. Engage the crank:
Insert the crank into the designated slot at the front of the engine.
Ensure the crank is properly engaged before proceeding.
4. Crank the engine:
Use a strong, upward pull on the crank to turn the engine over.
Do not push down on the crank, as this could cause injury if the engine kicks back.
Some recommend using your left hand with your thumb outside the handle to avoid injury from potential kickback.
5. Adjust controls:
Throttle: The right lever on the steering column controls the fuel flow to the engine.
Ignition timing: The left lever on the steering column adjusts the timing of the spark plugs.
Choke: The choke lever (often a small rod) can be used to enrich the fuel mixture for starting, especially in cold weather.
6. Start the car:
Once the engine is turning over, you can adjust the throttle and ignition timing to find the optimal settings for the engine to run smoothly.
You may need to experiment with the choke to find the right mixture for your specific conditions.
Once the engine is running, you can release the hand crank.

That said, I am a great appreciator of contemporary art museums and I think the frequency of such work is vastly overblown. There is a lot of good stuff out there that is very creative. However, it is true that a lot of this very creative stuff also has a seemingly obligatory paragraph about capitalism or patriarchy attached to it, and that does seem to be a bit of a straight jacket on much (but hardly all) contemporary art. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Much less than the straight jacket that religious art was (or is still today).

Yes, indeed creativity and something new are things put on a pedestal in modern art in my view.

Gothic architecture was pretty amazing (and philosophical). They just lacked the technology to fully see it through.

I wouldn't say that. Simply after the technique was basically universal, which any art school could teach, then the focus was simply to have other techniques than photorealism. That in the end you had modern art isn't at all a death of high art.

I should have qualified what I meant about the death of art. I mean of the art being produced at the time of modernism, not the art of previous periods. In the art establishment during the 20th century what constituted High Art of that period was what the art establishment deemed to be High Art being produced at that time(during the 1950’s and 60’s). It has always been like that to a lesser extent. So when someone in the art establishment talks about High Art, they are usually referring to the art being produced at the time they are saying it. This is also reinforced by the current fashion in art of the time, which follows the zeitgeist. So during the modern period, what constituted High Art evolved very quickly through the process of developing from Impressionism, cubism, surrealism and expressionism, into modernism.

It was this current idea of what was High Art, which died a death into modernist absurdity, sometime during the second half of the 20th Century.

During the post modern period, High Art lurched from one development to another culminating in conceptual art, which was nonsense asserted as High Art and grotesque perversions of modernism, asserted as High Art.

If you’re going to argue that, you may as well add that there hasn’t been a progression in science and technology either.

Well I will argue it with three examples. The arts are a matter of conception, expression and forms of beauty. Something which evolves and devolves with changes in societies and cultures. Science and technology are quite different pursuits.
(Forgive my lack of pictures, as I don’t have an image hosting account at the moment, so will have to link to articles about the pieces.)

Firstly pre-Cycladic art reached a high standard in depiction of beauty and refinement between 5,000 and 2,000 BCE. Such refinement was arguably not equalled until cubism in the 20th Century. I suspect that Picasso for example, copied, or was influenced by it (along with examples of African tribal art).
https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/cycladic-figures

Secondly, the blue vase of Pompeii, the skill in design and execution may not have been equalled since the time it was made in Ancient Rome.
https://www.interno16holidayhome.com/2019/02/22/discovering-the-blue-vase-of-pompeii/

Thirdly, the Pantheon in Rome. An architectural gem, which may not have been equalled in the 2,000years since it was built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome

Architecture has rarely reached such heights of design and execution. Over the intervening periods. And indeed the great pyramid of Giza, is such a mind boggling feat of construction. It is probably only now, with laser technology, that we have the ability to reproduce it.

During the post modern period, High Art lurched from one development to another culminating in conceptual art, which was nonsense asserted as High Art and grotesque perversions of modernism, asserted as High Art. — Punshhh

I am largely immune to art (it mostly bores me rigid) but why would you argue this? Is your dislike of modern art rooted in a preference for classical and formalist traditions, and in the sense that contemporary art conflicts with your ideas of beauty and moral coherence?

Gothic architecture was pretty amazing (and philosophical). They just lacked the technology to fully see it through

C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image has some pretty neat stuff on how the Gothic cathedral is an image of the medieval cosmos.

But I agree with the bolded. What we need is a revival where we build a Gothic cathedral on the proper scale, with a 3,000 foot spire! :rofl:

Or not. That huge clock tower in Mecca was a cool idea, but it looks incredibly gaudy to me in context.

During the post modern period, High Art lurched from one development to another culminating in conceptual art, which was nonsense asserted as High Art and grotesque perversions of modernism, asserted as High Art. — Punshhh

Well, the so called High Art has it's tendencies to go the extreme as @Count Timothy von Icarus gave us an example with "stuff like human excrement or menstrual blood thrown at a canvas with a paragraph on how it's attacking capitalism, the patriarchy, etc. attached".

Yet I don't think this is regression. It's simply art transforming to an institution that will desperately want to do something new ...and shocking! Perhaps it's like a political movement which at start had sound and justifiable objectives and an agenda, which the majority of people agreed on, has then an existential crisis, when these objectives are gained. Then comes the "next wave" of thinking and thinkers, the new generation, which is usually hijacked by radical ideologues. The next wave after that is even more silly. This has happened to feminism, when you compare modern feminism to the suffragettes. Yet it also has happened to liberalism, when one just thinks of the anarcho-capitalists and their take on just what an ideal libertarian society would be like.

True regression would really being of losing some technology or skill that previously was there. If that technology or skill lost isn't worthy to be kept up, that isn't so bad. But when it is something that people have enjoyed or have given a lot of value, then that is really bad.

We should notice that art is far more the parody many give it. Art isn't only the exhibitions and concerts that the hoi polloi doesn't have money or interest to experience. Pop music is one thing I think will be here to stay just like movie art, thanks to the 20th Century. Perhaps the problem today is that for example making music is simply too easy.

You have chosen just a couple examples. The idea that the measure of quality in painting and sculpture is accurate realistic representation is, I would say, aesthetically naive. For example, some of what is considered to be the greatest modern art more closely resembles the examples of medieval art you chose than it does The Last Supper or the Pieta.

We should stop gazing at our own navel and notice what huge transformation has happened in the World. Absolute poverty has decreased dramatically around the World. China is far more prosperous than it was fifty years ago as are many countries all over the World. — ssu

Well my comment was regarding Western countries. It looks to me like any appearance of increased average prosperity is on account of increased debt. It seems that, in a world of diminishing resources that are becoming ever more costly to extract, we are borrowing against the (illusory) promise of increasing future prosperity. But I acknowledge it is a complex issue, and as I already said, I am not an economist. That said, how many economists today include the environment in economic reckonings as anything other than a range of "externalities'"? (It's a genuine question; I acknowledge there may be more than there would appear to be at a superficial glance).

:up:

. What we need is a revival where we build a Gothic cathedral on the proper scale, with a 3,000 foot spire — Count Timothy von Icarus

That was kind of the idea of the Chicago Sky Chapel.

https://images.app.goo.gl/PB9r5v6ycLD54yWx9

Well my comment was regarding Western countries. It looks to me like any appearance of increased average prosperity is on account of increased debt. It seems that, in a world of diminishing resources that are becoming ever more costly to extract, we are borrowing against the (illusory) promise of increasing future prosperity. — Janus

Well, technological advances have kept up, so even if we already have experienced Peak conventional Oil many years ago, yet we don't have a crisis of diminishing resources. The resource crisis that people were counting to happen by using simple extrapolation models from the present didn't happen. What we have is a very problematic monetary system that is based on perpetually growing debt. When will that happen, who knows.

In fact, I would dare to say that our modern society is far more able to deal with global crises than civilizations were earlier. The Pandemic just few years ago is a case example. Yes, it has been always very trendy and hip to look at our future in a bleak and pessimistic way. Yet Oswald Sprengler wrote The Decline of the West in 1922. The decline of the West hasn't happened yet, I would say that the great catch up done by many Asian countries doesn't tell us that the West is declining. Even the US can survive two Trump administrations, I guess.

That said, how many economists today include the environment in economic reckonings as anything other than a range of "externalities'"? — Janus

Look, economists as fortune tellers forecasting the future can basically predict only 6 months ahead. In fact, it's great if they can agree on the economic cycle we are just now in. Changes in the environment take a bit more time to happen. Yes, summers are warmer than before, but all it takes is a few volcanoes to erupt and cause the temperatures to fall. That's the problem with forecasting: you can see the obvious long term cycles going on, but that doesn't matter if something else puts you into a totally different situation you have prepared for.

Hence we do have things like climate change, falling population growth and other issues that are quite clear and will happen, but forecasting what will happen simply depends on too many butterflies flapping their wings and creating hurricanes in the other side of the planet. Start from a butterfly like Donald Trump would not be a TACO and go through with "Liberation Day" tariffs.

Besides, human decisions have huge impacts on the environment and wildlife. Just to take one example: In the 19th Century whales were hunted to near extinction and whale had to be replaced with other oils as there simply weren't enough whales in oceans. Then in the mid 20th century whale population made a huge comeback in only a few years. What happened? WW2 and unrestricted submarine warfare all over the Atlantic happened. This had the effect that basically for the wartime years no whalers went out to hunt whales as they themselves would have fallen prey to German U-boats. Just like the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that created a wildlife refuge around Chernobyl, the environment reacts to our actions in ways that we haven't thought of.

(Bisons near an abandoned Belarussian village in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in 2016. Wildlife are able to reproduce before falling to the radioactivity of the place.)

C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image has some pretty neat stuff on how the Gothic cathedral is an image of the medieval cosmos. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I read Otto Von Simpson's book. It made an impression on me. Is Discarded Image something I should read?

Well, technological advances have kept up, so even if we already have experience Peak conventional Oil many years ago, we don't have a crisis of diminishing resources. What we have is a very problematic monetary system that is based on perpetually growing debt. — ssu

If there were real growth in prosperity, then why the need for growing debt? Debt seems to be nothing more than borrowing against the assumption of increased future prosperity. The problem with the oil that is being extracted today in comparison with the pre-peak oil extraction is that it is now much more costly to extract in terms of both money and energy.

In fact, I would dare to say that our modern society is far more able to deal with global crises than civilizations were earlier. — ssu

Earlier there were local, not global crises, and I think that is the significant difference. Previously there was always somewhere else to go if resources were no longer available, now there is nowhere else to go.

We face, not merely global warming, but extensive environmental pollution, habitat loss and species extinction, soil nutrient depletion and salination, ongoing decline of the fisheries. It seems to me like we are throwing a global party (to which, of course, not everyone is invited) without any thought for the coming hangover. I see that view as realistic, not pessimistic.

By some reckonings the current population level is simply not sustainable by some quite high order of magnitude―that is that the Earth can only sustain a population between 1 and 5% of the present.

And here we are worrying about a purported decline of creativity in philosophy. I don't think a return to traditional values and religion is going to help us―probably the effect would be quite the opposite, even if such a project were even possible.

If there were real growth in prosperity, then why the need for growing debt? — Janus

Our way of life is dependent on the idea of virtual capital. The banking system as we know it started in Italy. Italian bankers financed wars and from there the financial sector started moving toward the center of the European economy.

It's true that we're basically living beyond our means, but that's how we've become what we are now. That simple idea of debt revolutionized us.

Borrowing against increased future prosperity is okay provided future prosperity will indeed be greater, otherwise it would seem to be economic suicide.

Borrowing against increased future prosperity is okay provided future prosperity will indeed be greater, otherwise it would seem to be economic suicide. — Janus

The British were in debt before the Great Depression. That debt was never repaid. The whole global economy just reset after the war. The same thing will eventually happen to the US national debt.

At this point economic suicide would be halting lending. That's basically what the crisis of 2008-2009 was: a hard credit freeze.

The situation after a world war would not seem to be the same as the major economic player defaulting on their debt. Can such a thing happen without consequence?

I agree with you that it is not possible to simply halt lending, just as it is not possible to suddenly eliminate 95-98% of the population to bring it down to a sustainable level.

The situation after a world war would not seem to be the same as a the major economic player defaulting on their debt. Can such a thing happen without consequence? — Janus

It would cause a global economic depression. Marxists were the first to start talking about the social effects of the boom/bust cycles of capitalism. They believed that eventually there would be a depression so severe that capitalism would basically die and be replaced by something else.

No, Kripke didn't use "textbook analytic philosophy".

Where traditional analytic philosophy (especially mid-20th century varieties influenced by logical positivism or the ordinary language movement) emphasized linguistic analysis aimed at dissolving philosophical problems, verificationist or deflationary attitudes toward metaphysicsand and an a priori, often conceptual, methodology, Kripke brought back robust modal metaphysics (possible worlds, necessity vs. contingency, essentialism), causal-historical accounts of reference instead of descriptivist theories, and a more realist attitude toward necessity—one that didn’t reduce it to analytic truth or linguistic convention.

In that sense, he was doing something strikingly new: not abandoning analytic philosophy, but expanding its scope and rehabilitating kinds of metaphysical argument many thought had been permanently discredited. So while he was using the tools of analytic philosophy—careful argumentation, attention to language, etc.—he was not merely repeating its "textbook" methods or conclusions.

So again, the premise of your thread - that there has been a decline in the quality of philosophy - remains unsupported.

My own view is that generally I see more attempts to be original that tend to do the exact opposite. It seems that there are some serious ideas being put forwards, but a lot of them are based on more nebulous ideas and in what I will call pop-philosophy there has certainly been a growing tendency to present 'new views' that are in fact narrow views or poor reiterations of older philosophical works.

The kind of thing I am talking about is someone looking at all of history being shaped by Capitalism or Tea or Psychedelics or Racism etc.,. It is these kind of myopic perspectives, generalised so broadly, that I find disconcerting/disappointing.

I am largely immune to art (it mostly bores me rigid) but why would you argue this? Is your dislike of modern art rooted in a preference for classical and formalist traditions, and in the sense that contemporary art conflicts with your ideas of beauty and moral coherence?

I do like a lot of modern art, but I saw the art establishment self immolate during the 1980’s and 90’s.
This was actually the post modern period in art. It had been left with a radical ideology by the modernists (1950-70’s) and interpreted it as a requirement to tear down, the last vestiges of formalism and tradition in High Art. To debase art to the point that art was whatever the artist says it is. This resulted in a race to the bottom of art and art exhibitions, where sensationalism, shock value was the goal. I attended all the exhibitions in London at the time during the 1990’s and realised that art as anything meaningful had died, to be replaced by shocking sensationalised works, where the goal was to get newspaper headlines about how extreme and perverted art had become.

Yet I don't think this is regression. It's simply art transforming to an institution that will desperately want to do something new

Yes, definitely. I’m referring more to the tearing down of traditions in art. Now we have a clear space for new art movements to move into.
There are lots of new exciting movements in art, a favourite of mine is a revivification of nature and landscape in art with the recent work of David Hockney for example,
https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/exhibitions/david-hockney-a-bigger-picture
Who has a major exhibition in Paris at the moment.

Fair enough, I avoid art which tries to teach or works hard to make statements about life. Do you think these artists coveted media tales of perversion, or were they simply perverse and the media lapped it up?

It was a bit of both. They were nice people, ordinary, down to earth art students, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. They were surprised when their fame first happened and quickly realised that producing sensationalist works, just fuelled the media scrum. Some of them realised, or already knew that the establishment had lost its way and we’re basically given carte Blanche to do whatever they want and it would be regarded as credible High Art. As long as the art world was being reinvigorated, anything goes.
Much of the work was taking the Mickey out of the establishment and seeing how far they could go without being censored. And then when some were censored* it just fuelled it even more.

Charles Satchii, a wealthy advertising mogul, saw an opportunity and set the whole thing in motion on the world stage. Another example of big money becoming involved in the art world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_British_Artists

*there was a work which included a dead human foetus, which was censored.

↪Skalidris No, Kripke didn't use "textbook analytic philosophy".

Where traditional analytic philosophy (especially mid-20th century varieties influenced by logical positivism or the ordinary language movement) emphasized linguistic analysis aimed at dissolving philosophical problems, verificationist or deflationary attitudes toward metaphysicsand and an a priori, often conceptual, methodology, Kripke brought back robust modal metaphysics (possible worlds, necessity vs. contingency, essentialism), causal-historical accounts of reference instead of descriptivist theories, and a more realist attitude toward necessity—one that didn’t reduce it to analytic truth or linguistic convention.

In that sense, he was doing something strikingly new: not abandoning analytic philosophy, but expanding its scope and rehabilitating kinds of metaphysical argument many thought had been permanently discredited — Banno

If one defines regressiveness as the regurgitating of older systems of thought, then Kripke’a work is no more than a variation, a slight twist on philosophical thinking available already in the first half of the 19th century. But he’s not alone in that. Much of today’s intellectual culture has yet to catch up with the leading edge of 19th century thought. But as long as you find it challenging, the rest is irrelevant as far as I’m concerned.

Kripke is a branch off Wittgenstein. I don't think that kind of philosophical reticence existed in the early 19th Century.

Philosophy dives into and back out of mysticism. Wittgenstein was the latter.