Publisher's Synopsis
When there is neither forward nor backward, only a step to the side helps. Modernity also seems to have run its course aesthetically, and yet every hope of progress or conquest is still indebted to the historical avant-gardes. Today's post-, neo-, even Arrière-garde share the same fate of a never-ending awakening. Paramodernity, on the other hand, means pausing, allowing a sideways glance at our ever-expanding present. In such a sideline, but also in contrast, an epochal panorama becomes visible, which can also be described as a tragedy of art religion and its educated middle-class audience. Both phenomena of the 19th century are considered outdated. But have we ever caught up with them? Anselm Feuerbach's Plato's Banquet is a symbol of this coping process, even before his time, our time. It is evidence of an outdated contemporaneity that teaches us to cope with broken new beginnings. The "banquet of Plato" is a paradigm of an eternal modernity of the classic - especially in its failure.
