INTRODUCTION
If we want to paraphrase the words of the famous classical scientist and a poet A. E. Housman, when he reflected on the sculpture development in the 20th century, we would say that the sculpture and the overall art was created in the days when the world was falling down, in the hour when the world’s grounds were trembling. The German Jewish-Marxist Walter Benjamin in his famous Theses on the Philosophy of History said: “A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”
Progress is surely the word that marked the 20th century while, on the other hand, ruins of the world wars and genocides were piling up to the utmost extents. The Progress was also a religion of many artists who, obsessed with the technological development and high velocity, jumped into writing noisy manifests and exploration of new techniques of artistic expression whose impact is very much palpable even at the present time. However, it remains to be seen weather they will resist the time and preserve the real artistic values or be remembered only as a curiosity of the long-suffering century. The paintings on the ceilings of cathedrals, sculptures of saints are replaced with mobile futuristic constructions, cubist paintings where... [continues]
If we want to paraphrase the words of the famous classical scientist and a poet A. E. Housman, when he reflected on the sculpture development in the 20th century, we would say that the sculpture and the overall art was created in the days when the world was falling down, in the hour when the world’s grounds were trembling. The German Jewish-Marxist Walter Benjamin in his famous Theses on the Philosophy of History said: “A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”
Progress is surely the word that marked the 20th century while, on the other hand, ruins of the world wars and genocides were piling up to the utmost extents. The Progress was also a religion of many artists who, obsessed with the technological development and high velocity, jumped into writing noisy manifests and exploration of new techniques of artistic expression whose impact is very much palpable even at the present time. However, it remains to be seen weather they will resist the time and preserve the real artistic values or be remembered only as a curiosity of the long-suffering century. The paintings on the ceilings of cathedrals, sculptures of saints are replaced with mobile futuristic constructions, cubist paintings where... [continues]
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