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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Nietzsche and art « Previous | |Next »
March 24, 2009

Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen argue in Nietzsche and the Future of Art that a Nietzsche’s views on art were reflected to a significant degree in the work of artists in the years following his death, a period of development in the arts that saw changes in artistic method and purpose that rival any that preceded it—the period of Modernism.

It is the thesis of this paper that Nietzsche’s conception of art, and specifically his views as laid out in The Birth of Tragedy, directly foresaw and established a philosophical foundation for the primary developments in the art of the twentieth century in the Western tradition, laying out a role and vision for art that characterize the developments which define Modernism. It is an alignment of imagination, and a potential range of influence, that has been ratified by numerous artists who cite Nietzsche in their writings, and it can perhaps be most clearly observed in the principal achievement in visual art of the century—the development of pure, or nonrepresentational, abstraction.

One interpretation of Nietzsche has him valorize art as a standard against which he believes we should strive to live our lives. Despite the quite different strands to such an underlying assumption about Nietzschean aesthetics, it is common, if not to all, then to most, interpretations over a century and more of Nietzsche scholarship that Nietzsche is taken to have raised art to that standard and measure.

From the earliest interpretations of both Nietzsche and Zarathustra as prophetic ‘poet-philosopher’, to Bäumler’s and Heidegger’s strong emphasis on the Will to Power’s expression as art, Kaufmann’s post-war valorization of the Apollinian, French or post-structuralist interpretations of the creativity inherent in Nietzsche’s thought, to more recent Anglo-Saxon readings of Nietzsche’s thoughts on art, by Nehamas, Young and others, this assumption has remained\common and gone largely unchallenged.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:57 AM |