Virtuosity in developing socieities

As an inveterate punk rocker, I am in general not all that impressed by skill and virtuosity. I heard some opera singers at the New York Philharmonic a few weeks back doing a modern piece of poems set to music and was not impressed, not in the slightest (though a performance of a Mahler piece later that night was quite something).

But I was in an art museum the other day with the kids, who were not in good moods, and caught a quick gander at an illuminated manuscript, and I must confess that it's hard to imagine the impression an illuminated manuscript or, for that matter, stained glass window or vaulted nave -- would have made in Medieval Europe. There is a raw power to artisanship, a transcendence, in the context of developing societies, where all outside is chaos.


I'm sure this is Art History 101 level thinking, but it did strike me at the time. Which is something these days.