The Golden Age of Mediocrity

Therivel cites Mozart, whose talented but unsuccessful musician father made sure that his son had opportunities to study in Venice and Vienna, as an example of a genius who scored high in all GAM/DP categories. In contrast, rival 18th century composer Antonio Salieri came from an apparently less talented gene pool and had fewer educational opportunities, which may be why he's remembered mostly as the jealous, vengeful schmo in the film "Amadeus."

Nevertheless, the concept of the innate, unfettered artistic genius persists, perhaps because it has given generations of writers, painters and musicians an excuse to frequent brothels, smoke opium and wreck hotel rooms in pursuit of their muse. The notion of being a human vessel for a divine gift also gave artists a bit of cover for another enduring truth--that the simplest way to become a genius is to have good PR. In truth, many of the truly great artists were not only virtuosos at their chosen means of expression, but also prodigiously adept at self-promotion.

Albrecht Durer, who in the late 15th and early 16th centuries became one of the first great art stars of Western culture, had the audacity to paint a self-portrait in the style that artists used to portray Christ. When Oscar Wilde arrived in New York in 1882, the author of "The Importance of Being Earnest" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray" informed a customs officer: "I have nothing to declare except my genius."

The truly pioneering genius of self-promotion was surrealist painter Salvador Dali. From his mid-20s to mid-30s, he created genuinely inspired paintings--"Lugubrious Game," "The Persistence of Memory" and so on--that staked his claim to greatness. He then spent the next five decades promoting himself as an eccentric genius whose waxed mustache tips picked up signals from outer space.

In a sense, the current crop of house-brand geniuses are spawns of Dali and his Great Artist shtick. But today--with the Internet, blast faxes, hundreds of cable channels and 750-square-foot video screens that can turn anyone, regardless of talent, into a giant looming over Times Square--it's possible for would-be greatness to be hyped to an extreme that even Dali would have a hard time imagining. Given the pervasive crudeness and disdain for subtlety in postmodern society, it's now perfectly acceptable to proclaim one's genius as loudly and raucously as professional wrestlers threaten one another with mayhem. As art critic Robert Hughes puts it, "There is a kind of forcible vulgarity, as American as a meatball hero, that takes itself for genius." No wonder that when Howard Stern berates television executives for failing to appreciate the "pure genius" of his work, or Marilyn Manson issues a news release proclaiming that "I am equally the artist as much as I am a work of art," a jaded world barely thinks twice.