Art Deco Fiction: Literary Reflections on the Seventh Art

Abstract

The interwar aesthetic context was shaped by a range of tendencies that severely undermined the dichotomist approach to culture as “high” and “low,” and created an unprecedented challenge to artists who still conceived of their trade as a sacred ritual. Among all the arts, literature was possibly most vulnerable to the pervasive acceleration of life, the insatiable desire for entertainment, and the all-consuming celebration of the physicality of the world and the vitality of the human body. All of these tendencies could potentially suppress readers’ interest in introspection and spiritual exploration. In a world of unbridled consumption, where the artist was progressively losing his autonomy and becoming more dependent on public tastes programmed by the commercialized environment, intellectuals questioned the very possibility of original creative activity. New means of reproduction contributed to the rise of mass culture, which was rapidly dislocating art from its elite position. In his seminal essay, Walter Benjamin argued that the most critical element that “withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.”¹ The decay of this aura and the loss of authenticity are caused by the increasing role of the masses as consumers of art and their desire to make artwork easily accessible, “to bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction.”