I get your drift but Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) is considered the first big break with traditional western culture - African masks on whores, expressionism, flattened space). Which led to Cubism and then Futurism. You could go back further to Fauvism and Symbolism in the 19th century. Gaugin leaving his wife and kids for the noble savages of Tahiti, for instance.
I don't think Modernism is so much a product of nihilism, although that is certainly a big factor, but hatred of everything the petit bourgeoisie stood – and stands – for. The communists, after all, rejected Modernism as bourgeois decadence and they supposedly weren't nihilists. Christianity rejected Greek ideals of beauty and I doubt one could say that was a result of nihilism. That said, there's a lot of nihilism out there in the "art industry."
I generally agree with you. I just think Dadaism is probably more of a grandparent to contemporary art than Futurism. Dada was emptiness and irony in spades whereas Futurism seemed to be more vital, more animated by masculine tumescent energy, like an earlier version of Jackson Pollack. Dada seems to me more feminine, passive and subversive like Andy Warhol, Gerhand Richter or Jean-Michel Basquiat (one of his just sold at auction for $110M).
Thank you for reading and for your comment. When Leftists -- as they have called themselves for centuries, being at the Left hand of God with Satan (adversary in Hebrew, if I remember correctly) and seated to the left of the French king -- sent their shock troops into the arts to destroy, yes, I agree it was hatred. Spawned from envy, definitely contemptuous, and meaning nothing: empty. It was the Russian futurists, as they called their "movement," who were the carriers of the black plague from the Steppes that has run through the arts of the West, leaving it a waste. They had nothing to discover, discovered nothing and offered nothing. Life was meaningless for them, so their art could not rise above their stunted, grotesque consciousness.
What I've seen in person of Picasso at Yale, MOMA, etc. is of a genius talent dedicated to chopping up people on canvas. How people do not see the violent approach to his subjects exhibited plainly and brutally in front of them as a sensationally new artistic convention while they marvel at his skill is beyond me. Then again, today, people praise Robert De Niro who specializes in mimicking fantasized irredeemable scumbags in productions that lionize them as if this is praiseworthy "acting."
I could write more in response, but will stop here and leave it to my longer work, in progress, to address some of the historical aspects. However, I think it has run its course, its energy spent, the demoralizers themselves demoralized..
I get your drift but Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) is considered the first big break with traditional western culture - African masks on whores, expressionism, flattened space). Which led to Cubism and then Futurism. You could go back further to Fauvism and Symbolism in the 19th century. Gaugin leaving his wife and kids for the noble savages of Tahiti, for instance.
I don't think Modernism is so much a product of nihilism, although that is certainly a big factor, but hatred of everything the petit bourgeoisie stood – and stands – for. The communists, after all, rejected Modernism as bourgeois decadence and they supposedly weren't nihilists. Christianity rejected Greek ideals of beauty and I doubt one could say that was a result of nihilism. That said, there's a lot of nihilism out there in the "art industry."
I generally agree with you. I just think Dadaism is probably more of a grandparent to contemporary art than Futurism. Dada was emptiness and irony in spades whereas Futurism seemed to be more vital, more animated by masculine tumescent energy, like an earlier version of Jackson Pollack. Dada seems to me more feminine, passive and subversive like Andy Warhol, Gerhand Richter or Jean-Michel Basquiat (one of his just sold at auction for $110M).
Thank you for reading and for your comment. When Leftists -- as they have called themselves for centuries, being at the Left hand of God with Satan (adversary in Hebrew, if I remember correctly) and seated to the left of the French king -- sent their shock troops into the arts to destroy, yes, I agree it was hatred. Spawned from envy, definitely contemptuous, and meaning nothing: empty. It was the Russian futurists, as they called their "movement," who were the carriers of the black plague from the Steppes that has run through the arts of the West, leaving it a waste. They had nothing to discover, discovered nothing and offered nothing. Life was meaningless for them, so their art could not rise above their stunted, grotesque consciousness.
What I've seen in person of Picasso at Yale, MOMA, etc. is of a genius talent dedicated to chopping up people on canvas. How people do not see the violent approach to his subjects exhibited plainly and brutally in front of them as a sensationally new artistic convention while they marvel at his skill is beyond me. Then again, today, people praise Robert De Niro who specializes in mimicking fantasized irredeemable scumbags in productions that lionize them as if this is praiseworthy "acting."
I could write more in response, but will stop here and leave it to my longer work, in progress, to address some of the historical aspects. However, I think it has run its course, its energy spent, the demoralizers themselves demoralized..
Well done!