nostalgia is a longing for the past. nostalgia and modernity
TRANSCRIPT
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Nostalgia is a longing for the past.
NOSTALGIA AND MODERNITY
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“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.
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How do we react to this?
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Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Marc Rothko, 1942
Pasiphae and the Bull, Jackson Pollock, 1943
Modernists also return to myth as a means of making sense of present catastrophe and potential annihilation.
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Jean-Michel Basquiat, Self-Portrait, 1980s
Other important sources included primitive art, the art of children, and the art of the insane
closer to “the source” of life
reassuring
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primitive
modern
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• 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.
DYSTOPIA
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Historical ContextOne 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.)
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Trench warfare
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Gas attack
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The Battle of the Somme, 1916
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• A condition of pervasive hopelessness, of seeing the end as an absolute, which causes anguish and alienates us. Approximately 60 references to “despair” in LotR.
• 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.
MODERN DESPAIR
MODERN DESPAIR