Our aesthetic culture in all areas is defined by an extreme conservatism of form right now. Simple lines, flat design, tight greyscale pallets, and aestheticized poverty.

Extravagence, complexity, flair, joy, and fun would be very powerful if done well right now.

But maximalism needs discipline, meaning, and skill, or it just becomes a gaudy and messy LSD-core. The difference between complexity and entropy is virtue.

Have we lost the skill or cultural depth to produce or appreciate complex visual meaning?

Here's what complexity looks like done well. Very different aesthetic philosophies. All religious, all overflowing with life and virtue. All very different from modern minimalism.

This isn't some "retvrn to tradition" thing. None of these is the aesthetic of the future, but they are at least suggestive of a larger space of possibility. Let's make some predictions. What is the aesthetic of the future?

Color. Bright colors are going to come back in style hard as people get bored with drabness. At first, this will be building on the blank canvas of modern greyscale pallets. Flashes of life in grey post-apocalypse. Maybe we re-learn how to do larger pallets?

The key to larger pallets is that color is real, useful, meaningful, while still fitting into some overall scheme that has a harmony to it. This is hard, which is why I suspect skill.

Stepping out of prediction and into prescription, I don't think industrialized mass culture will go anywhere, but I do think there is an unusual amount of clout to be picked up by hiring artisans to go beyond airport culture. Extravagent beauty is undervalued right now.

Artisanal extravagence can't be purchased transactionally though. The market doesn't sell it yet. You have to develop and support a micro-movement by patronage and superior taste. Long term relationships. Maybe that's why it isn't happening.

But it could happen.

If you have means: develop taste, form long-term patronage relationships with artists, and create the beautiful aesthetic of the future.

Please.