ex-libris-blog:

“This is the wasteland of the Western Front. It is the great putrid scar of mud and decaying, rotting flesh that’s been cut across the face of Europe. This is the work of a man who was trapped inside his own recurring nightmare. Otto Dix and his generation had borne witness to these horrors, but they’d also been witness to the death of the 19th century faith in inevitable, unstoppable progress. What they’d learned in the trenches was that savagery and barbarism weren’t external, to be found only in the colonies, but inside all of us. They had seen that industry and progress and the supposed triumph of Enlightenment rationalism did not guarantee the survival of civilisation. And it was them, the poets and the artists and the painters of the trenches, who best understood what Europe had been through and who best foresaw the horrors that lay ahead.”

David Olusoga, The Cult of Progress, Civilisations (BBC 2018)