NOSTALGIA AND MODERNITY Nostalgia is a longing for

NOSTALGIA AND MODERNITY Nostalgia is a longing for the past.

“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. ” ---Mark Rothko Modernist artists respond to the inadequacies of representational art to convey emotion directly.

How do we react to this?

Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Marc Rothko, 1942 Modernists also return to myth as a means of making sense of present catastrophe and potential annihilation. Pasiphae and the Bull, Jackson Pollock, 1943

Other important sources included primitive art, the art of children, and the art of the insane Øcloser to “the source” of life Øreassuring Jean-Michel Basquiat, Self-Portrait, 1980 s

primitive modern

DYSTOPIA • A society characterized by human misery, loss, oppression, deprivation, often created by a tyrant or tyrannical government. • Usually futuristic. Although The Lord of the Rings creates a fictional past, Tolkien repeatedly emphasizes a future “falling, ” and a passing of goodness that cannot be replaced.

Historical Context One catastrophic world war over, another about to begin Inhuman horrors British losses in WWI: Dead - 750, 000, Seriously Injured - 1, 500, 000, Claiming Disability - 2, 500, 000, Shell Shock Victims 65, 000 (Counting casualties from the entire British empire (India, etc. ) the death toll rises to 947, 023. )

Trench warfare

Gas attack

The Battle of the Somme, 1916

MODERN DESPAIR • A condition of pervasive hopelessness, of seeing the end as an absolute, which causes anguish and alienates us. Approximately 60 references to “despair” in Lot. R. • To review: Humans have the freedom to defy this despair, with false hope, if necessary, and to act, even when we know such action is futile. The Master Soul would do this. A Slave Soul would blame others, feel self-pity, and ultimately abandon all hope.