Modernist artists deliberately abandoned the heroic image of humanity

Evidence

Artists as complex as the painter Paul Klee, or as programmatic as Loos, both reject the traditional, celebratory, noble image of humanity, which is decorated with all the offerings of the past, in order to turn to their naked contemporary, who lies screaming like a new-born baby in the dirty nappies of this epoch. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 849

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates Benjamin’s ‘new barbarism’ / poverty-of-experience thesis: the modernist turn to naked contemporary humanity.
• XREF: connects to: Industrial-era art loses its concrete human center as elements disperse into contingency. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 346; Modernism’s aesthetic withdrawal from reality was a retreat from politics — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 216; Early modernist exile retained tragic intentionality that postmodern exile lacks — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 234

Broader Connections

• Modernism’s aesthetic withdrawal from reality was a retreat from politics #expands (0.82) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 216
• Early modernist exile retained tragic intentionality that postmodern exile lacks #corroborates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 234