“But the real disjuncture between the fins de siecle lies deeper than this. A hundred years ago, painting and sculpture were still socially dominant forms: they continued to supply, to an extent now all but lost to us, the visual codes by which one interpreted the world…Because mass visual media hardly existed in the world of our grandparents and great-grandparents, painting and sculpture carried more weight: the weight of tradition, dreams and social commemoration. The very idea of ‘radical’ change in painting and sculpture gained its impetus from their traditional primacy and lost it when that primacy was lost.”
Robert Hughes, Nothing if Not Critical, p.13-14