Postwar Western art lost its fire while Third World culture reproduces Modernism’s conditions

Evidence

What is true is that the innovative fire has gone out of Modern art. Franco Moretti’s claim that the early years of this century represented ‘the last literary season of Western culture’ (see section 5.3 above) has more general applica­ tion to a wide range of cultural practices: I have often been struck by the tedium that often overcomes one while walking through a gallery of twentieth-century painting arranged in chronological order, as one moves from the excitement of the early part of the century to the desperate and all too frequently sterile iconoclasm of recent artists. Genuinely interesting developments have often come, as Anderson observes, in a Third World context which reproduces a similar constellation of circumstances to those which gave rise to Modernism in the first place. Think, for example, of the novels of Salman Rushdie, their author moving with apparent ease between Western metropolitan culture and the experience of a subcontinent unevenly and agonizingly integrated in global capitalism - a situation whose contradictions have, alas, become all too tragically manifest. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 588

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘Third World reproduces Modernism’s conditions’ claim echoes the uneven-and-combined-development core of the Marxist tradition, connecting to Callinicos’ broader thesis and to Jameson’s periodization debate. — connects to: Modernism emerged from a specific industrial-capitalist conjuncture that postwar capitalism destroyed — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 562; World War II’s outcome destroyed modernism’s spurring historical forces — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 218; Modernism’s decline stems from political defeats rather than economic change — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 216 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• World War II’s outcome destroyed modernism’s spurring historical forces #corroborates (0.88) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 218
• Modernism emerged from a specific industrial-capitalist conjuncture that postwar capitalism destroyed #corroborates (0.85) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 562
• Modernism emerged from the risky space between past, present, and political future #corroborates (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 210
• Modernism’s decline stems from political defeats rather than economic change #qualifies (0.72) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 216