>>107232395I think this has more to do with 1) how art is consumed 3) the commercial context of art rather than a conscious manipulation of artistic voice.
You don't really look at commercial art the same way as people consumed it 50 years ago. You don't want to look at ads at all because ads are extremely obnoxious and invasive in the digital era, so if you make an image for an ad it needs to read super clearly. This is why most commercial illustration today has the same minimalistic vibe, it reads much better, more quickly and more clearly than a complex piece of art. Back in the day people didn't have that knee-jerk reaction to ads so you could make a detailed painting and people would stare at it. People consumed things in a slower fashion, they would look at pictures for a long time, now we just eat all this shit at lightning speed so all the information needs to be on the surface. Minimalism also reads better than detailed art on a small screen.
This is also probably why manga is drawn in its typical style. The Japanese read manga REALLY fast, they can finish them in minutes during commutes etc. The characters' faces are extremely simplified and have very clear expressions so you get all the information you need as quickly and clearly as possible.
We are moving from complexity and nuance to clarity, quantity and speed because the world moves a whole lot faster these days. This is also affecting written information with listicles, Tweets, a tendency to organize facts in a timeline or by clear paragraphs point by point instead of putting everything together in a discourse.
