What works that are canonically considered “masterpieces” of their artistic genres gained that status the quickest? Which ones gained it the slowest?
Was Citizen Kane on serious critics’ list of top 5 movies of all time within a few years of its release? Were Beethoven’s 5th and 9th symphonies received with the adulation we now think they deserve? How quickly did the Mona Lisa and the collected works of Shakespeare ascend to the honored position they hold today?
I just finished a recorded biography of Beethoven (from The Teaching Company – any of their musical instruction materials, especially from Greenberg, are highly recommended!!) and in fact, the later Symphonies were considered so avant-garde as to be inaccessible by Beethoven’s audience. This of course begs the question, WHY was he so successful in his lifetime? The answer seems to be that the well-to-do liked to associate themselves with the “wild, experimental” Beethoven as a status symbol, in a somewhat similar vein to modern art pieces today.
By contrast, in 1813 he wrote an Overture called “Wellington’s Victory” to celebrate Napoleon taking a beating at waterloo. This piece was full of simplistic structure, nationalistic bombast, and is judged now to have been basically a money-grab. At the time of it’s release it was an ENORMOUS critical success, but within 2-3 years of its debut it was considered a laughingstock, and is in fact now hardly known except to dedicated Ludwig-philes and musicologists.
Moby Dick was very slow to be recognized. The book came out to terrible reviews, mostly because it was too much in a tradition of the sentimental novel* to be considered by serious critics, and too much away from the tradition of the sentimental novel for the fans of such to like it. It was completely forgotten until the 1920s, when the conventions of the sentimental novel were long forgotten, and was hailed as a masterpiece.
There are many examples of art hailed as masterpieces at the time they were first displayed/published/performed. Some examples include The Birth of a Nation, Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, Gravity’s Rainbow, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth, most of Shakespeare’s works, etc.
Yes. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Picture.
*To understand Moby Dick, it’s useful to have read the works of Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth.