A Poetic Retelling

Mankind had unleashed its hidden beast and the result was not only the tangible horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima but a miasma of hatred, suspicion, and bigotry that lingered still. Under such circumstances artists continued to work, but they could no longer paint or sculpt the reassuring “things” — objects, landscapes, or people — that had occupied their predecessors for centuries. To do so would have seemed fakes, tantamount to nostalgia for an innocent past that had most likely never existed in the first place. The myths and themes of nationalism were also unworthy subjects in an age that had seen so many crimes committed in the name of the state. Religion? For many, it had been lost among the broken bodies piled up like cords of wood that had — for artists who had not witnessed them firsthand in war — appeared in newsreels at the cinemas or in the front-page photographs of daily papers. Artists who were able to, who needed to work despite for the desolation or the times, had been forced to look deeper for a subject, to look inside and the only thing they could be sure of — themselves.