Greatness in early modernism was an objective career strategy, not inner talent.

Evidence

A beginning is made on that process by grasping the once-famous names no longer as characters larger than life or great souls of one kind or another, but rather — nonand anti-anthropomorphically — as careers, that is to say as objective situations in which an ambitious young artist around the turn of the century could see the objective possibility of turning himself into the “greatest painter” (or poet or novelist or composer) “of the age.” That objective possibility is now given, not in subjective talent as such or some inner richness or inspiration, but rather in strategies of a well-nigh military character, based on superiority of technique and terrain, assessment of the counterforces, a shrewd maximization of one’s own specific and idiosyncratic resources. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 669

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the Bourdieu-style field analysis of artistic careers as positional strategy rather than innate genius.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: is ‘genius as career strategy’ falsifiable, and how does it cohere with Jameson’s broader claim that postmodernism dissolves the centered subject?