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RE: What is Dadaism?
I thought art - as a worship of beauty (see Tolstoy's "What is Art?") - shows but doesn't tell truth; hence the famous couplet from "The Grecian Urn": "Beauty is truth and truth, beauty; / That is all ye need to know and all ye can know."
I very very much dislike the modern art that is always "meaning something" or "asking something" - which are both the same thing just from opposites angles, like two sides of the same coin so to speak; a question frames its answer.
Tolstoy's "What is art" if I remember it correct, was not his critique of Shakespeare there, which was really naive?
Smart. You forget he was categorizing Great Art when he "dismissed" what he thinks (as a romantic and existentialist christian) is not the highest of the highest caliber. He was being very selective, even omitting his own oeuvre.
As one who idolized the peasant and trusted the peasant's artistic sensibilities over those of the most refined intellectual, he yet thinks the plebeianism of Shakespeare (part of what makes Shakespeare so great) is not worthy of Great Art; which tells of his sobriety in categorizing Great Art.