Just came across an interview with the person who wrote the initial article in question.
She expands a little more on the issue at the heart of the problem at the end of the (long) interview: the spiritual poverty of contemporary art has saddled it with a shallow and stereotypical aesthetic.
Great art in the past was often associated with major spiritual and religious movements, and, in way, both religion and art are set adrift without each other. Art loses it’s values and purpose, and religion loses its voice.
Now we have brands that have supplanted religion as the main provider of personal purpose and significance. You know the joke - Steve Jobs (a messianic figure himself) built Apple into the first publicly traded religion.
We have designers creating objects that aren’t just used by consumers but are tools to facilitate daily optimal experience, as spiritual a condition as most johns & janes q. public are ever going to be involved with. Designers educated and trained in the art of making and doing and the art of getting others doing and making (a sort of spiritual daishadokyo journey in and of itself).
So it’s no wonder currently the cradle of creativity is seen in the field of design. Ironic, because it was awhile back it was design thinking that was all the buzz - designers as policy makers. Now they’re shaman.