Classes here are riddled with students griping about the lack of good art in modern times. 

“I just thought to myself as I was reading this that no one could ever capture something today in the way Melville does.”

I disagree with these students, and love modern art. 

No, I don’t mean the purple and orange abstractisms outside your public library. I mean the incredible art made by our contemporaries — Hillsdale students or otherwise. 

Art — poetic, visual, lyrical — thrives at Hillsdale College. Don’t believe me? Swing by Howard or pick up a copy of the Tower Light in a few weeks. I can’t imagine the gall it takes to sit in class teeming with young creatives and say nonsense like “I just don’t think there’s any more great books waiting to be written.” 

If that were true, half of the college’s staff would be unemployed and their students without majors. Moreover, if students truly believed that, would there even be a point to them attending a liberal arts college? It’s an awfully nihilistic view of the thing you’re paying to do. 

Even outside of the Hillsdale bubble, the “no more good art” premise is proven false over and over again.

The internet has opened the educational floodgates to so many more people than ever before. Ten year olds can hop on Reddit and learn how to animate from their iPad. Sure, this makes for more bad art, but it also increases the diamonds in the rough exponentially. 

Liz Obert is one of my favorite photographers of the 21st century, and fans of 16th and 17th century still lifes would love her musings in the series “Modern Vanitas.” Not unlike Andy Warhol, Obert finds beauty in household items like Skippy peanut butter jars and beach balls. 

Similarly, writers and poets have found a safe haven to showcase their talents on websites like Substack. The ability to self-publish to a large audience is without a doubt one of the greatest outcomes of the digital experiment.

I think those who’d dismiss the efforts of millions of living creatives should, instead, say “I’m uneducated in the field we’re discussing, and I probably shouldn’t make generalizations about something I haven’t researched.” 

Alternatively, they could also say nothing at all.