The idea of the "destructiveness" of modern art is put into a new focus when the charge is that it is bourgeois culture in particular which is being destroyed, or which is destroying itself. The attacks on "modernism" then assume a political coloration: they are made in defence of the social status quo. French Cubist painting came under attack during World Var One as "inherently 'anti—national".[1] Later, Picasso became a prime target of the champions of Nazi morality, who regarded him as the leading representative of Kulturbolschewismus.[2] Oliver Gogarty in the Observer (May 7, 1939) saw "Bolshevism" of a sort even in James Joyce:
- Resentment against his upbringing, his surroundings, and finally against the system of civilization throughout Europe... created this literary Bolshevism which strikes not only at all standards and accepted modes of expression whether of beauty or truth but at the very vehicle of rational expression.[3]
Stuart Gilbert nine years earlier had noted that
- Mr Joyce has been hailed in certain quarters as a 'literary Boolshevist', whose object and delight is to blow sky high all conventions, social and artistic.[4]
There is scarcely need to refer to the many such remarks made in relation to Khlebnikov, for whom, as Tynyanov put it,
- the methods of literary revolution and historical revolution were similar.[5]
The Russian Futurists gladly accepted the charges levelled against them as "Bolshevists" of literature.
- ↑ Schwartz, op cit p 118.
- ↑ Daix, op cit p 181. In October, 1944, Picasso joined the French Communist Party, having been a sympathizer since its foundation.
- ↑ In: Denning, op cit p 675.
- ↑ "The Growth of a Titan", Saturday Review of Literature, vii (August 2 1930); in: Denning op cit p 537.
- ↑ 0n Khlebnikov, in: E J Brown, op cit p 97,
