Decadence

The following are considered decadent: abnormality (madness, genius), provocation, extravagance, ugliness, infirmity (degeneration), perversion, deviation, passivity, weakness, artificiality, Narcissism…But the list also includes ironic distance which renders things uncertain; aphoristic quizzical paradoxes and uncompromising doubt; critical scepticism; consciousness of the “other”; a demand for a universal validity of aesthetics and a universal quality of differentiating imaginations; sophistication of meaning and expression; architecture of reversions, variations, tone values and nuances; subtlety of stylization and mystification; melancholic illusionism; majestic exclusivity; egotism.Decadence originates through a subjective linking of extremes regarding the content of Naturalism and Symbolism, through a linking of pathology of the body and the spirit of art. The disruptiveness of Decadence is programmatic. Decadence in the visual arts represents the dynamic duality of order and chaos, the painful moment of birth of a new life and new structure. An interest in extreme situations in the course of searching for one’s own identity and the meaning of life is a characteristic of Decadence. Decadence is founding the courage to name the world and life in all its brands and abundance, it was drawn to the possibility of discovering its depth even at price of discovering its horrors and madness. The world full of wars, uprising, revolutions, social conflicts, has to be destroyed, the mirror which helped Perseus to kill Medusa has to be held up for it to see its own face. The illusion of the permanence of ethical principles has to be destroyed or at least changed and the examination of the reverse face of human existence to be continued still deeper.