Leonardo introduced technology, Michelangelo added naturalism, Caravaggio brought in the beauty of the lower classes, Rembrandt introduced art images to the common home, Manet eliminated the mythological basis of art and reified "street" experience, Monet revolutionized the portrayal of light and Van Gogh did the same for color. Genius is the transformation of collective experience by one individual for the common good. It must be, by definition, the antithesis of evil, although evil may be one of its subjects. Postmodernism precludes genius because it assumes that artistic creation is a constant recycling of previous work, so that someone like David Foster Wallace could not be labeled a genius because modern Western culture denies the role. Postmodernism, indeed, adjudges genius as fundamentally reactionary, because the domination of culture by one individual denies the historical power of the collective.
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