Valéry on Fashion and Art

One of the surest and most deplorable symptoms of that weakness and frivolity of character which marked the Romantic age was the childish and fatal notion of rejecting the deepest understanding of technical procedures, . . . the consciously sustained and orderly carrying through of a work . . .—all for the sake of the spontaneous impulses of the individual sensibility. The idea of creating works of lasting value lost force and gave way, in most minds, to the desire to astonish; art was condemned to a whole series of breaks with the past. There arose an automatic audacity, which became as obligatory as tradition had been. Finally, that switching—at high frequency—of the tastes of a given public, which is called Fashion, replaced with its essential changeableness the old habit of slowly forming styles, schools, and reputations. To say that Fashion took over the destinies of the fine arts is as much as to say that commercial interests were creeping in.