In 1949, the philosopher Theodor Adorno commented that ‘writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.’ After the Second World War, optimism in the future was difficult to sustain. It shattered the modernist dream and defiled the impulse that sustained modern art. The Second World War and the Nazi holocaust, we now realize, dealt a mortal blow to modernism. Humans who were considered racially inferior or were deemed medically, mentally, or physically defective, disabled, impaired, or incurable, or otherwise regarded as morally or socially deviant, degenerate, weak, or impure, were targeted, at first, for euthanasia or sterilization, but later, upon being identified as possessing ‘life unworthy of life’ ( Lebensunwertes Leben) were simply killed. Whereas progressive modernism sought to improve the lot of all humankind, the Nazis, utilizing ideas derived from social Darwinism, employed eugenics (the science of improving human hereditary) with the aim of establishing a hierarchically superior and racially pure ‘master race’ ( Herrenrasse). Hitler, too, had wanted to create a new and better society, but his method of achieving it horrified the world. The suppression of progressive modernist art in favour of a propagandistic Socialist Realism also occurred at the other end of the political spectrum in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
In 1932, however, under Josef Stalin, this freedom was sharply curtailed and modern art, such as it was, was forced to adopt a more conservative form, known as Socialist Realism. Progressive modernist artists, in the imaginative freedom of their works, exemplified or encouraged this freedom. Communism offered the vision of universal freedom predicated on the freedom of ideas. Marxist communism was the boldest attempt yet to create a better society, adopting not a political democracy but an economic democracy which aimed at achieving economic equality. The Russian Revolution had seemed at the time, and for a long time after, to be the answer to the progressive modernist's dream. Pablo Picasso, for example, joined the communist party in 1944, as did many other artists. Progressive artists actively supported political revolution. In the period between World War One and World War Two progressive modernism continued to pursue its goals, but now often in association with other forces. It may be claimed that Dada marks the emergence of a post–modernist cast of mind. The senseless, mechanized slaughter of the First World War showed that modernism's faith in scientific and technological progress as the path to a better world was tragically misguided.įor the Dada artists, the ‘Great War’ signaled the failure of all modernist art. It is true many advances have been made in science, technology, medicine, education, suffrage, life expectancy, and physical comfort, but is the world a better place for all that? Has the modernist experiment resulted in the creation of a better human society? For an increasing number of people the answer is no.įor some, problems in the pursuit of modernism were already apparent early in the 20th century. After two hundred years of concerted effort, we ask what has been accomplished. The tenets of the movement, its belief in progress, freedom, and equality, had been sustained from the outset by artists and intellectuals, and embraced by those who reaped the material benefits it brought.īut now there was cause to question these beliefs. There was mounting evidence that the modernist enterprise was failing. Following the global catastrophe of the Second World War, the triumphalist history of modernism began to be challenged.