Nostalgia

Published on June 30, 2011 by Discussion Cafe

Context

From the Art 21 blog:

"In the preface to his 1991 New York chronicle, Low Life, Luc Sante
impeccably articulates this delightfully torturous paradigm. His
analysis maintains an uncanny resonance to the generation currently
perpetuating and profiting from the time he published:

The common word for this kind of distortion is “nostalgia.” This
word can be generally defined as a state of inarticulate contempt for
the present and fear of the future, in concert with a yearning for
order, constancy, safety, and community—qualities that were last
enjoyed in childhood and are retroactively imagined as gracing the
whole of the time before one’s birth. Recently it has become a
category of trade, under which are marketed the knickknacks and
ephemera of past decades; in this function it encompasses
connoisseurship, fetishism, fashion cycles, and social history, and
makes them all equally base coin."
 

Discussion Questions:

1. What are some examples of art that relies heavily on nostalgia?

2. Why do you think that nostalgia has evolved to receive its own category within the arts?

3. How does nostalgia within art reflect the spirit of contemporary culture?

4. What are some benefits of nostalgic art?

5. What are some dangers of nostalgic art?

(Thank you to Morgan Riles of IAMNYC for this topic suggestion!)