Art 109A: Contemporary Art (Art Since 1945)Westchester Community CollegeProfessor Melissa Hall

Postwar Europe and Existentialism

Postwar EuropeThe atmosphere in Paris after the close of World War II was grim

Ed Clark, View along Quai du Louvre (today Quai François Mitterrand) down the Seine toward Ponte Des Arts with the Eiffel Tower in the distance, 1946. Time Life 

Postwar EuropeWartime depravations, the human cost of battle, and the humiliation of four long years of German occupation were enough to cause feelings of despair.

Ed Clark, cover of LIFE Magazine, 1946. Time Life 

Postwar EuropeBut the war’s end also brought revelations of atrocities that were staggering in their enormity

Buchenwald Concentration Camp, April 16, 1945LIFE

Postwar Europe

Buchenwald Concentration Camp, April 16, 1945LIFE

“Freedom . . . for Paris came with the liberation of the city in August 1944, after four years of German occupation, but the peace was not easy.  As the occupying forces retreated, in their wake came revelations of Nazi atrocities and of the full horror of the concentration camps — first in the press following the Russian troops’ arrival at Auschwitz in January 1945, and then on the return of deportees in May . . . .” Francis Morris, “Introduction,” Paris Post War:  Art and Existentialism 1945-55, Tate Gallery, 1993, p. 15  

Postwar Europe

Mushroom cloud of smoke billowing 20,000 ft. in the air after atomic explosion over the city of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945LIFE

“Then in August 1945 the atomic explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought an end to the global war, introduced a devastating new dimension both for the individual and for world politics . . . “Francis Morris, “Introduction,” Paris Post War:  Art and Existentialism 1945-55, Tate Gallery, 1993, p. 15  

Postwar Europe

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre attended the ceremony of 6th Anniversary of Founding of Communist China in Beijing on 1 October 1955 in Tiananmen square. Wikimediahttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simone_de_Beauvoir_%26_Jean-Paul_Sartre_in_Beijing_1955.jpg 

“As Simone de Beauvoir commented:  ‘the war was over; it remained on our hands like a great, unwanted corpse, and there was no place on earth to bury it.'”Francis Morris, “Introduction,” Paris Post War:  Art and Existentialism 1945-55, Tate Gallery, 1993, p. 15 

ExistentialismDisillusionment and despair caused many to turn to the Existentialist philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre, who proclaimed that human beings must struggle to define their own existence.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, first published in 1948

ExistentialismOne of the founding principles of Sartre’s philosophy was the concept that “existence precedes essence.”

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, first published in 1948

“We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world and defines himself afterwards.”Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism

ExistentialismSartre was rejecting the Humanist beliefs that had prevailed in Europe since the Renaissance

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, first published in 1948

HumanismPlaces man on a pedestalPresumes man’s “greatness” as a given

Michelangelo, David, 1508

“One may understand by humanism a theory which upholds man as the end-in-itself and as the supreme value.”Jean Paul Sartre

ExistentialismSartre used the metaphor of a paper-knife (or paper knife) to make his point

Image source: http://www.vicinodesign.nl/VD0010-00.htm

“When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the time, as a supernal artisan . . . . Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism

ExistentialismAs Nigel Warburton explains:

Image source: http://www.vicinodesign.nl/VD0010-00.htm

“What he meant by this was that, in contrast to a designed object such as a penknife – the blueprint and purpose of which pre-exist the actual physical thing – human beings have no pre-established purpose or nature, nor anything that we have to or ought to be. Sartre was an ardent atheist and so believed that there could be no Divine Artisan in whose mind our essential properties had been conceived.”Nigel Warburton, A Student’s Guide to Jean Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism 

Existentialism

Image source: http://www.vicinodesign.nl/VD0010-00.htm

“Nor did he believe there to be any other external source of values: unlike for example, Aristotle, Sartre did not believe in a common human nature which could be the source of morality. The basic given of the human predicament is that we are forced to choose what we will become, to define ourselves by our choice of action: all that is given is that we are, not what we are. Whilst a penknife’s essence is pre-defined (it isn’t really a penknife if it hasn’t got a blade and won’t cut); human beings have no essence to begin with.” ”Nigel Warburton, A Student’s Guide to Jean Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism 

ExistentialismAccording to Sartre, there is no “blueprint” or “divine creator”

“If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism

William Blake, The Ancient of Days (God as an Architect), 1794

ExistentialismExistentialism proposed that man is responsible for inventing himself through his actions

Will Rodes, A Lump of Clay, Flickr

Existentialist “Angst”One of the consequences of Sartre’s philosophy is the overwhelming sense of “abandonment” that humans feel in a world where “god” does not exist, since it means there are no rules to guide us

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Existentialist “Angst”

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“By using the word ‘abandonment’ in a metaphorical way Sartre emphasises the sense of loss caused by the realisation that there is no God to warrant our moral choices, no divinity to give us guidelines as to how to achieve salvation. The choice of word stresses the solitary position of human beings alone in the universe with no external source of objective value.”Nigel Warburton, A Student’s Guide to Jean Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Humanism

  

Existentialist “Angst”Radical freedom

Responsibility of making choices in the absence of rules

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“That is what “abandonment” implies, that we ourselves decide our being. And with this abandonment goes anguish.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism