Monstrosity is the Untruth

TLS October 25 2013

from Jack Flam's review of T. J. Clark's Picasso and Truth: From Cubism to Guernica:

Although Clark takes a rather long and circuitous route to conclude that Picasso is a monist whose art is amoral--not from indifference, but from a reality principle (the world itself being amoral)--his discussion of parallels between Nietzsche and Picasso contributes to a better understanding of Picasso's uniqueness as a thinker as well as a painter. It also provides an implicit rebuke to Jung's expectation that great art be "good" as well as beautiful. Following Nietzsche, Clark maintains that the way monstrosity collapses normal terms of identity and difference can be a substitute for truth: "Monstrosity is the Untruth--the strangeness and extremity--inherent in everyday life".

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