Optimistic Humanism is the hopeful search for an answer big enough to contain a reason and meaning for all things with the starting and ending reference point located only within humanity. The philosophers were led to despair. To the point that Sir Julian Huxley proposes that people would be better people if they believed in a god, even though there is no god. The optimism ran out, just like our humanness runs out, we need a bigger source, a bigger picture outside of ourselves.
The artists came along, namely the Impressionists. I really like Van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet and others. Schaeffer points out that they were following the influence of the humanistic philosophers before them - trying to find a universal meaning from the resource of their own artistic accomplishments. Generally, they all ended in despair, some in suicide. As admired as Van Gogh's work may be, he came to the end of himself and his art in despair. Where was truth, where was ultimate meaning to found? These questions went hauntingly unanswered.
The next step was to believe that there was no such thing as any real external organizing reality. No truth, no meaning, just chance, just randomness. So the Dada-ists were born. Even their name was randomly chosen by sticking a finger in a dictionary. They set out to deconstruct meaning, destroy organization through the medium of art. Marcel Duchamp was "brilliant and destructive - and he meant to destroy" Schaeffer says. They created art that subtly deconstructed one's meaningful sensibilities. Schaeffer comments, "Always the observer is involved and is deliberately destroyed," and elsewhere, "[Duchamp] causes the viewer to make himself dirty."
"These men are dying while they live; yet where is our compassion for them?" asks Schaeffer, "They are struggling with their appalling lostness."
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