Postmodernism might have had a liberating effect on the arts. Skepticism about the objectivity of truth provided artists with limitless imaginative possibilities, while a critical analysis that privileged subjective interpretation over authorial intent opened the doors to a bracing new iconoclasm.
Postmodernism, in other words, seemed to herald a democratization of form, meaning, and value. It would rescue the arts from the dusty irrelevance of the traditionalist canon, and the pointy-headed elitists who presumed to decide what was of worthy of greatness and study and what was not. Hitherto neglected artists and their works were disinterred and reappraised (some of which turned out to be good and some of which did not), while sacred cows were gleefully slaughtered and gutted (some of which deserved it and some of which did not). And some exciting and vibrant new art got produced in the process — hip, ironic, self-referential, irreverent, and smart.
But then postmodernism began a precipitous slide into reductio ad absurdum that ought to have been a foreseeable consequence of its premises. Skepticism about objectivity petrified into a paradoxical dogma that the only objective truth is that nothing is objectively true. The democratization of merit, meanwhile, raised new and perplexing questions about how to evaluate art. If artistic value is merely a matter of personal interpretation and taste, then by what standard is critical judgement possible? If subjective response is the true measure of value then, independent of interpretation, art is all of equal worth. And if all art is of equal worth then it is all equally worthless. So now what is art for?
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