Autor/ Author: Stefan Haus
Aasta/ Year: 2018
ISBN: 9789949994496
Keel/ Language: inglise / English

There is great danger in not realizing we are in danger. Modern and contemporary art from Monet and Picasso to Koons and Prince reproduces our nihilist misfortune in many forms: historical, political, scientific, cultural and others. Fortune that is to be produced is pushing this Dictionary forward and so is the Dictionary pushing its readers onward, ahead of betterment and beauty. Early philosophical experience knew that the secret of beauty is in goodness, that is, in the power that allows beings to be what they truly are. Unlike ugly modern and contemporary art, this Dictionary drives the reader toward beautiful art. Beautiful art is also real art, art of the real. Reality is nothing one can find or look at. Reality is beyond nihilism, it consists of something and not nothing. A really good dictionary of modern and contemporary art wants art that will speak, show and command reality and goodness.

This Dictionary uses both typical and atypical terms to aim at one thing and one thing only: modern and contemporary art’s reproductive nature. Its subject is its enemy. From many different angles, the Dictionary speaks and shows how art of the last 130 years reproduces everything low in our theory, practice and production. Instead of that, Dictionary urges the reader to reject such bad reproduction and direct not only him or herself but everyone toward the production of everything good. Goodness of good art is not in succeeding in formal qualities of a work, but rather, it is in causing salvation in the viewer.