Abstract
The unprecedented horror of totalitarianism which came to light in the United States during and after the Second World War necessitated a reconceptualization of evil among American artists.** In a book review published in the Spring of 1945 in Partisan Review Hannah Arendt wrote,
The reality is that “the Nazis are like ourselves”; the nightmare is that they have shown, have proved beyond doubt what man is capable of. In other words, the problem of evil will become the fundamental question of post-war intellectual life1.
While the use of mythology in American art at mid-century has been discussed in depth, especially in regard to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, this bid to place all but incomprehensible contemporary events into a standardized pattern gains a new dimension in the context of Hannah Arendt’s concurrent investigations, albeit in the political rather than the artistic sphere.2 Arendt’s theories are integral to the shift by prominent Abstract Expressionists from what was essentially a Surrealist conception of evil to that of a more Existential one.
I would like to thank Professor Mona Hadler and my wife Susan Koski Zucker for their guidance and support.
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Notes
Hannah Arendt, “Nightmare and Flight,” Partisan Review, Vol. 12 (Spring 1945), p. 259. A review of The Devil’s Share.
See Kirk Varnedoe, “Abstract Expressionism,” “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art, Vol. 2 (New York: 1985); Stephen Polcari, Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience (New York: 1991); Ann Gibson, “Editorial Statement,” Art Journal, Vol. 47, no. 3 (Fall 1988).
Polcari, op. cit., p. 43. Also see Carl Gustav Jung, “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious,” in The Portable Jung, ed. Joseph Campbell, trans. R. Hall (New York: 1971) originally from a lecture given October 19, 1936 at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.
Wilfred McClay, A Haunted Legacy: The German Refugee Intellectuals and American Social Thought (dissertation abstract: Johns Hopkins University, 1986).
Leah Bradshaw, Acting and Thinking: Reflections on the Political Theory of Hannah Arendt (Political Science dissertation: York University, Canada, 1984).
In Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the “Apocalypse” series, c. 1497–98 (British Museum, London), multiple evils incarnate charge down from the sky — but within a religious context governed judiciously by an angel and the ancient rules of sin and virtue. Francisco Goya, in his fresco Saturn Devouring One of His Sons, 1820–22 (Museo del Prado, Madrid), also frames his image of evil in a pre-established mythology. Here, Saturn (Cronos), one of the Titans, son of the Earth and Heaven, devours one of his children — a God. This is one of the principal organizational themes of mythology as understood by Joseph Campbell. Within myth there is an inevitable dramatic cycle, as predictable as the seasons and rooted in the human psyche, within which evil is as necessary as good. See Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: 1949). Modern examples include Pablo Picasso’s 1937 painting Guernica (Museo del Prado, Madrid), and Thomas Hart Benton’s Again of 1942 from the “Year of Peril” series (State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia). While each work refers to the contemporary violence of fascism, the obvious allusions to historical Christian iconography (the former refers to the massacre of the innocents, the latter to the crucifixion) attempts to place contemporary aggression within an ancient moral system. Arendt notes that “The one thing that… made the traditional conceptions of hell tolerable to man: the last judgment [was] the idea of an absolute standard of justice combined with the infinite possibility of grace.” Hannah Arendt, “Concentration Camps,” Partisan Review, Vol. 15, no. 7 (July 15, 1948), p. 751. For a reproduction of the Dürer see Willi Kurth (ed.), The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer (New York: 1963), catalogue number 109. For a reproduction of the Goya see J. Tomlinson, Goya in the Twilight of the Enlightenment (New Haven: 1992). For a reproduction of the Picasso see William Rubin (ed.), Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective (New York: 1980), p. 342. For a reproduction of the Benton see Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock,and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (Chicago: 1991), illustration number 4.28.
Mona Hadler, “David Hare: The Magician’s Game in Context,” Art Journal, Vol. 47, no. 3 (Fall 1988), p. 198.
Polcari, op. cit., p. 41. Stephen Polcari has carefully documented several of the key sources of mythology utilized by the artists: these include Franz Boas, an anthropologist at Columbia University, whose work on the primitive was of interest (his daughter was a friend of David Smith and Dorothy Dehner); the book, The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer which was owned and/or read by Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Clifford Still, Jackson Pollock, Theodor Stamos, and Hare as was The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. In addition, Polcari lists Jackson Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Clifford Still, Seymour Lipton, Lee Krasner, Mark Rothko, and John Graham as all familiar with Jung. Polcari, pp. 38 and 43.
Campbell, op. cit., pp. 245–256.
“Sheet lead and poured stone” (collection of the artist). For a reproduction see Kermit S. Champa, Flying Tigers: Painting and Sculpture in New York, 1939–46 (Providence, R.I.: 1985), catalogue number 70.
Albert Elsen, Seymour Lipton (New York: 1970), p. 27.
For a reproduction see Cécile Whiting, Antifascism in American Art (New Haven: 1989), p. 175.
Campbell, op. cit., p. 154.
Campbell, op. cit., p. 25.
For an overview of Arendt’s short essays during the 1940s, see Jerome Kohn (ed.), Hannah Arendt: Essays in Understanding,1930–1954 (New York: 1994).
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. by Francis Golffing (New York: 1956), pp. 137–138.
“Der Führer eröffnet die Grosse Deutsche Kunstellung 1937,” Die Kunst im Dritten Reich (Munich) Vol. 1, nos. 7–8 (July—August 1937), pp. 47–61, trans. Ilse Falk in Herschel Chipp, Theories of Modern Art (Berkeley: 1968), pp. 476–482.
Varnedoe, op. cit., p. 652. According to Steven Heller the swastika is among the oldest of signs, the word is of Aryan/Indian origin perhaps explaining its attraction to Hitler. In this ancient context it was a symbol of the sun wheel, a sign of resurrection. Steven Heller, “Symbol of the Century,” Print, Vol. XLVI, no. 1, pp. 39–47.
Peter Adam, Art of the Third Reich (New York: 1992), p. 110.
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven: 1984), p. 241.
Hannah Arendt, “Approaches to the German Problem,” Partisan Review, Vol. 12, no. 1, p. 94.
Varnedoe, op. cit., p. 617.
Ibid., p. 617.
Arendt, “The Concentration Camps,” op. cit., p. 745.
First phase: “Subjects of the Artists” school (organized by Baziotes, Hare, Motherwell, and Rothko; Still had helped and Newman joined later). The school closed after a single semester. Second phase: “Studio 35” run by Tony Smith and others. 3rd phase “the Club” at 39 East 8th Street.
Irving Sandler, “The Club,” in Abstract Expressionism: A Critical Record, David and Cecile Shapiro, eds. (New York: 1990), p. 52.
Ibid., p. 56.
Thomas Hess, “When Art Talk was a Fine Art,” New York Magazine clipping, p. 82, Hannah Arendt archive at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Young-Bruehl, op. cit., p. 249 and a conversation with Irving Sandler (November 21, 1992).
Polcari, op. cit., p. 117.
(Estate of David Smith, #k183), for a reproduction see Champa, op. cit., catalogue number 77.
Ibid.
From a telephone interview conducted by the author on November 14, 1992. Ms. Dehner was married to David Smith during the period in question.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, 1951), pp. 124–127.
Varnedoe, op. cit., p. 649.
Hannah Arendt Archive, Box 4, The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Hannah Arendt, “The Hole of Oblivion,” Jewish Frontier (July 1947), p. 23.
Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, op. cit., p. ix.
Young-Bruehl, op. cit., p. 369.
Ibid., p. 253.
Arendt, “Approaches to the German Problem,” op. cit., p. 95.
Champa, op. cit., figure 38.
From the Introduction of the Museum of Modern Art exhibition catalogue, The New American Painting: As Shown in Eight European Countries, 1958–1959 by Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
Shapiro and Shapiro, op. cit., p. 96.
Hannah Arendt, “What is Existenz Philosophy?,” Partisan Review, Vol. 8, no. 1 (Winter 1946), pp. 34–35.
Hannah Arendt Archive, Box 45, The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Hadler, op. cit., p. 197.
Polcari, op. cit., p. 354; Hadler, op. cit., p. 197.
. Alan Balfour, Berlin: The Politics of Order, 1787–1989 (New York: Rizzoli, 1990), pp. 72–73.
Jackson Pollock, “My Painting,” Possibilities: An Occasional Review, no. 1 (Winter 1947/48), p. 79 (collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art). For a reproduction see Irving Sandler, The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism (New York: 1970), plate 8–12.
Shapiro and Shapiro, op. cit., p. 157.
Barnett Newman, “The First Man Was an Artist,” Tiger’s Eye, Vol. 1 (1947), pp. 59–60.
Ibid.
Dana Villa, Arendt and Heidegger: Being and Politics (dissertation abstract: Princeton University, 1987).
Shapiro and Shapiro, op. cit., p. 133.
Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, op. cit., pp. 466–467.
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Zucker, S. (1998). The Language of Evil. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Creative Virtualities in Human Self-Interpretation-in-Culture. Analecta Husserliana, vol 55. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4890-0_20
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