Abstract

In 1951, Albert Camus asked two heretical questions that challenged key modernist assumptions. Had production replaced creativity? Was the avant garde analogous to totalitarianism? Decades later, the American art critic and theoretician Donald Kuspit would ask similar questions about postmodernism in “The End of Art.” Both Camus and Kuspit turned to Friedrich Nietzsche as the consummate advocate of an artistic life beyond fashion and “change for the sake of change.” Furthermore, Nietzsche had questioned the core modernist belief in progress as a meaningful social and artistic goal. This paper will analyze whether or not the questions that Niestzsche, Camus, and Kuspit posed remain relevant in the second decade of the twenty-first century as the arts confront the rise of a global civilization built upon commercial values.