Is the Twenty-First Century a Creative Void?

Audrey Wollen | The Yale Review | 8th June 2026

Interesting though dense. The late 20^th century had a “profusion” of new cultural ideas but now we are in a period of “creative emptiness”. That is bad because an inventive culture benefits us all while kitsch “never asks us to change”. But haven’t we already got a surfeit of the completely new, such as our burgeoning, online world? Who says cultural originality is the only path to social progress? Kitsch – the repetition of familiar things – breeds new forms of subcultures and from those come new ideas.