Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
When the arts fail, it usually indicates a broader societal problem, not just an artistic one.
In plain terms
Artistic decline is often a symptom of wider cultural issues.
What can you take from it?
Look beyond the arts to find root causes of cultural problems.

Where it applies

  • policy making
  • cultural criticism
  • social analysis

Putting it to work

  • investigate root causes
  • link art to policy
  • study societal trends

Questions to consider

  • What does artistic decline tell you about society?
  • Is art isolated from culture?

Another view

Sometimes the arts struggle due to industry specific issues alone.

More from Ezra Pound

  1. Make it new!

    Permalink to quote #4
  2. The temple is holy because it is not for sale.

    Permalink to quote #6
  3. Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one 'Sordello.'

    Permalink to quote #3

Related quotes

  1. I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. T…

    Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut quote #1
  2. In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissanc…

    Orson WellesOrson Welles quote #2
  3. Music and dancing (the more the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery among the less cultivated classes, that a taste for t…

    John HerschelJohn Herschel quote #7