originally published 8/1/1994
In her 1994 book on popular music, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music, Martha Bayles examines how modernist notions about science and the nature of truth have led to a loss of beauty and meaning in art. Bayles explains how the increasing emphasis on empirical data as the only measure of truth relegated both religion and art to the purely subjective sphere. This development paved the way for “introverted” modernism, a movement that disconnected art from any accountability to reality, preferring to celebrate art for art’s sake. Bayles’s book focuses on the reaction against this elitist trend that began with Dadaism after World War I and reached its apex with the music of Janis Joplin in the late 1960s. For “perverse” modernists, art is a means for shocking people. This interview was originally presented on Volume 10 of the Mars Hill Tapes.
12 minutes
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