Thus Nietzsche, only to usher in beauty: “We posses art lest we perish of the truth.”[1] Most artists would have reluctantly agreed with him a century ago, but artists today would only gape at him in bewilderment. Perhaps they would feel a bit more at home with the very inverse of Nietzsche’s battle cry for beauty. In a single century, truth has become an ornamental concept. It has become “beautiful.” But, behold: “We posses art lest we perish of the truth.”

Footnote

1. Nietzsche, F., The Will to Power, New York: Vintage Books, 1968, p. 435.