Robert Wrubel wrote:
>
> --- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> "capitalism, which always grows or creates extravagant
> disasters, both of which encourage creativity. . "
>
> I was just wondering whether there might be an art
> phenomenon parallel to Naomi Klein's "Disaster
> Capitalism" -- where a successful, well-financed pop
> artist, like Mann, or Truman Capote, moves into a
> violent, blighted, neglected part of society and
> exploits it for shock value and profit. ???
While it's arguable that "Modernism" was well underway in the 1870s, WWI (all its negative aspects) certainly fed in significantly to some very great work in the inter-war years. The Waste Land, for example, is best seen as a war poem. And reactionary art as well as "progressive" art (circa 1870=1950) was a reaction to the disruptive (i.e. "progressive") features of capitalism. I think that a serious case could be put that the worse capitalism is the greater the art it generates, both 'pro' and 'anti.' I've just started reading _The Making of Americans_ (Stein 1908-11) and if the writer of the Introduction is correct, the book celebrates aimless wandering rather than "progress towards a goal," and sees that as America over England: i.e. it belongs strongly to capitalist culture but is against the main feature of capitalist culture.
Carrol
Carrol