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Notes -
I think my comment on the original post is relevant here without editing:
I think a big part of this is that visual art is increasingly interpreted like narrative art. Narrative doesnt necessarily aim to be beautiful, and can be popular anyway. We wouldnt normally describe a novel as beautiful - its "good". Other narratives like are clearly not beautiful, like fairytales used to be brutal, but can still be good. We find the same in many artforms that contain a good bit of narrative: tragic plays, raunchy tavern songs, etc. In the West, this extends unusually far. I would guess that even for Scott, its normal to dress "cool" rather than "beautiful", where most societies would have only done that for certain occasions. Apple Inc design is... propably pretentious if youre super into it, but normies dont really object like they do with architecture. Etc.
The "higher" you get, the more everything becomes like this. That is why modern painting or architecture is often explained as references to earlier works, why it fells like "this should have been an essay", and also why it changes a lot. There is certainly an aspect of initiation to it, but its not just some snobs making stuff up for themselves - they are in fact "ahead of us" on a path we also go down collectively.
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