Roughly 1890 to WWI: art turns inward to a radically subjective, unstable self; alienation, despair, apocalypse, Freud as guru.
In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.
On Shore's admittedly simplified schema, modernism answers modernity's uncertainty in two waves: a Freudian plunge into the self, then an avant-garde that vaults past it, almost a Hegelian Aufheben.
Put simply Shore, simplifying on purpose: modern art answered the age's uncertainty in two waves. First a Freud-like dive into the inner self, then an avant-garde leap past the self, almost a Hegelian "Aufheben": overcoming something while carrying it forward.
Art has no duty to depict only goodness and beauty; the obscene, the ugly, the erotic and the wicked belong in it too: owning one's perspective means admitting its darkness.
Put simply Baudelaire: art need not show only the good and beautiful; the ugly, obscene, erotic and wicked belong in it too. Shore ties this to owning your own way of seeing, which means admitting its dark side.
First-wave modernism, Shore would say, carries forward Romantic motifs like Sehnsucht and the irrational naked soul, yet without Romanticism's wholesale celebration of passion.
Put simply Shore's view: early modernist art kept some Romantic themes, like longing for something that can never be reached and a naked soul full of irrational passions. But it stopped celebrating passion the way the Romantics did.
Gregor Samsa's waking as a "monstrous vermin" in The Metamorphosis forces the question of whether any stable self exists, or identity is only a mask with nothing underneath to grip.
Links from these claims to others in the course. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.
BaudelaireArt has no duty to depict only goodness and beauty; the obscene, the ugly, the erotic and the wicked belong in it too: owning one's perspective means admitting its darkness. L10 · 4:57
LewisFirst-wave modernism, on Lewis's account, is a crisis of representation: art stops assuming it must mirror the world objectively and asks whether to render it as felt from within. L10 · 5:48
Baudelaire's embrace of the ugly and subjective is re-read as the start of a crisis of representation.
ShoreOn Shore's admittedly simplified schema, modernism answers modernity's uncertainty in two waves: a Freudian plunge into the self, then an avant-garde that vaults past it, almost a Hegelian Aufheben. L10 · 3:21
ShoreThe avant-garde recasts the representation question: art is no mirror of life but a hammer for building it, a shift from representing to creating that eventually leaves no ground underfoot. L10 · 37:05
Shore sharpens the two-wave frame: first wave rethinks how art represents; avant-garde abandons representation for transformation.
FreudWe can never fully know ourselves: what is most basic in us sits in the unconscious, so the self stays opaque to itself and permanently at odds with itself. L9 · 48:02
KafkaGregor Samsa's waking as a "monstrous vermin" in The Metamorphosis forces the question of whether any stable self exists, or identity is only a mask with nothing underneath to grip. L10 · 13:37
Shore calls Gregor's waking from unsettling dreams very Freudian and ties the story's unstable self to what Freud tells us about subjectivity.
FreudWe can never fully know ourselves: what is most basic in us sits in the unconscious, so the self stays opaque to itself and permanently at odds with itself. L9 · 48:02
ShoreOn Shore's admittedly simplified schema, modernism answers modernity's uncertainty in two waves: a Freudian plunge into the self, then an avant-garde that vaults past it, almost a Hegelian Aufheben. L10 · 3:21
Shore characterizes first-wave modernism as a basically Freudian turn inward toward what is dark, hidden and not rational.
Throughlines that pass through one of these claims.
Terms that appear in the same claims.