ADI DA SAMRAJ

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Video Presentation - Transcendental Realism, The Art of Adi Da Samraj at 2007 BIennale di Venezia - 52nd Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition - Collateral Exhibition

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MODERNISM AND ITS AFTERMATH

by Adi Da Samraj

There was more great virtue at the beginning of the twentieth century than at the end—and, yet, what was occurring at the beginning of the twentieth century was also part of (and coincident with) the progressively emerging breakdown of world-culture and of the great human process.

There are many uniquely important elements in the culture and art of “modernism” which were interrupted at the end of World War II—but which I regard to be the roots of a profoundly transformative and artistically liberating renewal of the entire world-tradition of making and doing art. It is, therefore, necessary that the “liberating instant” of “modernism” be continued, and always further developed, and even, in the best of cases, exceeded—but, certainly, not merely renounced and forever lost…

The twentieth century was a period of the global collapse of the old (and even ancient) foundations and structure of civilization and culture. Thus, from the beginning of the twentieth century until World War II, the old order of civilization and culture was disintegrating and approaching its death. The period encompassed by World War II accomplished the death of the old order of civilization and culture. For the first two decades that included and followed World War II, the death of the old order of civilization and culture was the subject of reaction and regret (including much denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and resignation). Then, from the 1960s to the turn of the twenty-first century, there was a period of virtual non-civilization and non-culture. And, only now, is the moment for the emerging of the truly new.

Based on this synopsis of the twentieth century, the century can be divided into three periods of cultural and artistic evidence: the period of “modernism” (1900–1940), the period of “post-modernism” (1940–1960), and the period (or “dark epoch”) of no-culture and non-art (1960–2001).

From Transcendental Realism, by Adi Da Samraj
(Middletown, CA: The Dawn Horse Press, 2007)

Copyright © 2007 ASA. All rights reserved. Perpetual copyright claimed.

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