Two Excesses of Modern Art

I'm staring out with a supposition here (which I could expand on later, if someone wishes): much of modern art is horrid.  Music is one of the prime examples.  I don't just mean much of pop, rock, and rap, but even classical music, which I will use for examples here.  Modern music has often lost the concept of beauty, that which is true and good, which is properly proportioned and used correctly.  Beauty always involves a certain harmony, and that harmony is missing in much of modern music.  I just want to give examples of two of the biggest characteristics that defy beauty.

First is the focus on power.  This is not power directed to the good, but, often, power for power's sake.  Even if there is a direction towards the good, there is still an over-emphasis on power.  I've heard it said that when comparing, for instance, punk music with classic rock, the big difference is that, though the chords are the same, punk has more energy, that is, power.  Rock in general often has this direction towards power.  When people try to talk about the positive aspects of any work, instead of describing the work as beautiful, they often describe it as powerful.  They admire power, whether power to disgust (like slasher movies), power to ignite passions (some forms of rap and rock), power to draw tears ("Hallmark" movies), etc.  The power is what makes the work good, in the modern world's eyes.  For instance, listen to this modern rendition of the Dies Irae, a setting composed by Karl Jenkins (I think the demons in this video add to the effect):

When I first heard this, I thought I liked it: after all, it is powerful!  My fiancee helpfully commented on how simplistic the music was, and that opened my eyes: what drives this piece of music is the power of it all.  Power is equated with good art nowadays.  Think of major blockbuster action pictures: they often have little in terms of storyline, characters, good music (though it's powerful music!), etc., but they are huge on ginormous battles, epic choirs, explosions, explosions, and explosions (add a few more explosions if it's a Michael Bay film).  Much of modern art, in general, can be power for power's sake.

Another of the biggest excesses is dissonance.  Can dissonance be good?  Possibly.  Distinction can definitely be good, and connecting two disparate things can be good.  But doesn't harmony involve connecting two things that are different?  So is dissonance just connecting them in ways that highlights their differences, whereas harmony highlights their commonalities?  Or is dissonance even more removed from harmony?  I am truly not certain, but what I do know is that modern art loves dissonance.

We can easily see this love in actual modern paintings and other pieces: there is so much that seems like a combination of random elements on a canvas (or stranger material) whose goal is to look like nothing.  Even back to cubism, at least, there seems to be a desire to show things strangely, to show them in ways that don't mesh.  Music can do this even more strongly, I think.  The love of dissonance is what most makes me wary of modern classical music (and makes my fiancee even more weary).  Here is just one of the countless, countless examples of dissonance in modern classical music: this one is Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki:

One of the things most used to justify this dissonance, I think, is an appeal to tragedy.  After all, this piece is about an enormously tragic event.  Doesn't tragedy rip us apart?  Isn't that shown, artistically, through dissonance?  Explain the dissonance of the famous lyrics of Greek tragedies.  Explain the dissonance of the sad poems of Byron.  Explain the dissonance of chants for those fallen asleep.  Tragedy does not necessitate dissonance, and most certainly not dissonance in the current degree.  It seems that much of modern art can only deal with tragedy through dissonance and power.  The subtle tears of a single broken heart are hard to find in today's art.  Of course, dissonance is used for many things besides tragedy, but tragedy is one of the most prominent.

In summary, I identify two of the anti-beauty trends of modern art as power and dissonance.  Both are focused on in modern art to the detriment of beauty: they are focused on to excess.  True beautiful art cannot have enormous excesses in any degree, thus the high praise offered to these excesses in modern art shows the despising of beauty that many modern artists have.