What Do Artists Do?

Synchromist Flowers, William H. Yarrow

Artists solve artistic problems.

This is the argument made by Karl Popper, and the more I have thought about it, the more true it rings to me.

But that is not how most people think of art. Especially those in the avant-garde. In his essay from After the Avant-Gardes, “What Shall We Do After Wagner? Karl Popper on Progressivism in Music,” Jonathan Le Cocq presents Popper’s view that the avant-garde’s…