Gluck contrasts what she calls the “commodified exotic of mass culture” and the “aestheticized Primitive of the avant-garde.” How was this aestheticized Primitive of the avant-garde supposed to help “reinvest the role of the artist with spiritual value and social significance”? (Keep in mind what was discussed in class about the “disenchantment” of the modern world.) The issue here is how avant-garde artists thought they had discovered in non-Western art a means to resist bourgeois taste and the encroachment of consumerism.

Gluck contrasts what she calls the “commodified exotic of mass culture” and the “aestheticized Primitive of the avant-garde.” How was this aestheticized Primitive of the avant-garde supposed to help “reinvest the role of the artist with spiritual value and social significance”? (Keep in mind what was discussed in class about the “disenchantment” of the modern world.) The issue here is how avant-garde artists thought they had discovered in non-Western art a means to resist bourgeois taste and the encroachment of consumerism.

Last Completed Projects