Re:Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)
by card_zero on Saturday May 11, 2024 @10:50PM
(#40332007)
Some confusion here: is self-expression about expressing personal moral ideas, perhaps political ideas? Because "art for art's sake" was originally (with the aesthetic movement of the 1870s) in opposition to didactic purposes for art. It was supposed to be about beauty rather than telling the audience something (which in mainstream art at the time typically meant something hamfistedly "improving").
My understanding is that "individual expression" has been with us firmly since Romanticism (it was Beethoven who first promoted the idea that great artists are above kings). The whole "art for art's sake", artist as a high priest of culture etc. - these were all ideas that dominated the XIX century. They kind of withered in XX century after WW1, WW2 and Holocaust, and were replaced by post-modern modes of expression (i.e. we abandon search of the truth via art, because there is no "the" truth).