In earlier ages, there were men who were recognised by their contemporaries as among the supreme imaginations of all time. The people who first entered Chartres Cathedral or looked up at the ceiling of the Sistine chapel or heard Beethoven's 9th knew that they were at the birth of creations that equalled and perhaps surpassed anything of their kind that had gone before. That is not an experience that has been available to anyone in the last 100 years. (There is one 20th-century megastar, Albert Einstein, but he is not an artist.) None the less, modernism was a mighty creative force, and 50 years ago people still felt that there were giants upon the earth: Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Le Corbusier. Perhaps not all these reputations will stand the test of time, but the question is one of perception. Our age lacks living cultural heroes, and it should be no surprise if this leads some commentators to lay more weight on our inheritance from the past—that is, on the canon.
Another reason for canon anxiety may be a feeling that the political and media elite have either lost interest or lost their nerve. . . .
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