“Of course decline can be a fairly straightforward descriptive term–in the sense that we say that a person who is old and ill and will probably never entirely recover is “declining.” But to speak of “The Decline of the Arts” is to suggest a development with a philosophical or ideological amplitude, to evoke thoughts about the rise and fall of civilizations and cultures, about periodicity, systemic failure, decadence, maybe even the divine retribution that is sometimes woven into arguments about the collapse of civilizations.”