Dehumanization and Propaganda

Oh boy.  Today Professor Kozlowski is talking about Ortega y Gasset's 1925 essay "The Dehumanization of Art", which observes that contemporary art movements (like early modernism in literature, or abstraction and dada in visual art) are "dehumanizing", or de-prioritizing human experience in favor of artifice itself.  But he's actually going to talk about the political dimension of art and literature - how politicians in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War co-opted art and artists to serve propagandist purposes, and whether or not art can be successfully separated from its political dimension.  Today espionage, skullduggery, and military agendas meets philosophy, aesthetics, and art criticism. Suggested supplementary readings include: Familiarize yourself with early 20th-century art movements and artists, such as: Cubism (esp. Picasso) Abstraction (esp. Klee, Kandinsky, and Jackson Pollock) Dada (esp. Hoch and Duchamp) Surrealism (esp. Dali and Magritte) Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers by Joel Whitney To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/ And please consider contributing to Professor Kozlowski's Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/ProfessorKozlowski - where you'll also be able to vote for and suggest new topics for future lectures.