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I think Goethe posited that all art goes through three natural stages: classic, romantic and decadent and moves on to another form of classic that starts the process all over again, ever run across this?

I missed this comment earlier....sorry.

I'm also sorry to say that I'm not up on my German Romantic writers and philosophers. (I find German philosophy unbearably heavy....) I do see art as a cycle, but I would not use the word decadent. I do see a development from simple and primitive (Greek Archaic Art, early Medieval art), to more dignified realism (the Greek Classical style, the Renaissance, Neoclassicism) and then to exaggerated movement (the Hellenistic, the Baroque, and Romanticism).

But I do think the possibilities for art changed dramatically (and opened up amazingly) with the development of the camera. So I see the development of abstraction beginning more simply (Cubism) and then becoming more wildly energetic (Pollock). Then the pendulum swings back to simplicity with Minimalism.

Actually, what I think will happen is a development of many different kinds of abstraction in the next century. Giotto was the primitive of realism that developed into the Renaissance, and I think Cezanne will be seen as the same for abstraction. Artists will be free to pick from and develop abstraction to a new level of richness and meaning in the next century.

I guess you still might call that idea decadent. We are free to disagree.

I do see art as a cycle, but I would not use the word decadent.

I think decadent has become a loaded term, but then perhaps it has earned its reputation. IIRC, the classic phase was marked by clean lines, clear, straightforward forms, austere, reserved and was art in its healthy, young, innocent stage. Think late Spring/early Summer.
The romantic phase was marked as ornate, florid, fanciful, assymetrical and was art in full bloom, Think late Summer.
The decadent phase is marked by exaggerated romanticism, caricaturish, a garden overgrown with ivy, the dissolution of forms, often vulgar and sickly. Late fall, leaves brown and falling off of skeletal trees.

I think the development of the camera has been overrated. The camera can produce abstraction just as well as realism. It's effect on painting seems roughly the equivalent of the typewriters effect on the pen.