Does Serebriakova deserve her reputation? Can we criticize her art after the Silver Period as being anachronistic, and racist at times? Can a female nude painting by a woman of a different ethnic background be excused because the painting is by a woman?

The “low dishonest decade” Auden refers to was the 1930s, which was the high point of the American art movement known as Precisionism, or sometimes cubist realism. The phrase “clever hopes” sums up nicely the state of optimism that had preceded the Great Depression of 1929 but must surely have been dissipated by the time Auden’s pessimistic poem and Hopper’s alienated painting had appeared.

In 1907 Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque shocked the art community with their abstract way of painting. Film maker Arne Glimcher created a remarkable documentary capturing the story of how cubism changed the world.

Our ability to appreciate life can be mediated by art, we can understand through art pieces of life that would otherwise seem senseless, and by extension aesthetic experience is a way of creating meaning in our lives.

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