Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Part Two
Last time...
A brief look at a definition of art and the way in which
one of its purposes might be seen as the creation of a more emotive connection to world and to ourselves.
Lots of Modernisms
All of the previous examples can be seen as examples of Modernism, or Modernisms. They are all connected by this modern desire to challenge, break down, disrupt, destroy, etc. traditional forms and find modes that better represent modern society, the modern psyche and the modern situation of a humanity that was becoming utterly disconnected from traditional spirituality. And so what ended up happening was that all of these schools of thought started popping up. These schools were generally based around differing thoughts about what art should be trying to achieve and what the best ways of going about achieving that was - through painting, poetry, theatre, etc. It was one of the liveliest times in artistic history in terms of the number of different movements that appeared within such a small space of time - as soon as something established itself, something else popped up to challenge those established beliefs.
Futurism helped people to see the fundamental beauty of progress and the machine, while allowing these artists to express their beliefs about progress, technology, etc.
Impressionism was a way of seeing emotively. It helps people to see beyond the physical nature of the things they see and to examine their perception of them - the idea that seeing is bound in emotion.
Surrealists got us seeing the truth in the dream and helped us to see profound meaning in the initially incongruous.
Wildly individual
So, what Im hoping to express, is that this time that Huxley was writing was such a rich time of independent and individual thought - especially in the art world (all arts, not just painting). The art was liberating and I think it enriched not only the artists (in terms of their ability to express themselves) but the viewer too as they became better able to understand, appreciate and see their world by looking at it through the unique vision of these modern artists. Its not surprising to me that art is such a big deal in Brave New World - especially if John is to represent Huxley throughout this text.