"Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness"
About this Quote
Montale turns the romantic halo around art into something closer to supermarket packaging: made to be consumed, used up, tossed. The shock isn’t just the bleakness; it’s the precision. “Production,” “objects,” “consumption” drags art out of the museum and into the factory, a vocabulary that makes aesthetic life sound like industrial output. He’s not merely sneering at consumer culture. He’s diagnosing a modern condition in which even the most “spiritual” acts get processed through the logic of the market: desire, novelty, disposal.
The hinge phrase is “while waiting.” Art becomes a holding pattern, a way to pass time until the real event arrives: “a new world.” That promise has a political smell to it, the 20th century’s appetite for total resets - the utopian projects that claimed history could be rebooted if only the old mind could be replaced. Montale’s twist is to take that logic to its terminal point: liberation from “everything,” then from “his own consciousness.” It’s an almost deadpan escalation, as if the final consumer good is the self.
Subtext: he’s wary of any worldview that treats art as expendable in the march toward salvation, whether that salvation is technological, ideological, or merely the next trend. Coming out of fascism, war, and the churn of modern Italy, Montale’s skepticism lands like a cold, corrective slap: a culture that can commodify beauty can also fantasize about discarding the human inner life altogether. Art, in this frame, is both symptom and witness - the last fragile residue of consciousness, sold off in advance of its supposed disappearance.
The hinge phrase is “while waiting.” Art becomes a holding pattern, a way to pass time until the real event arrives: “a new world.” That promise has a political smell to it, the 20th century’s appetite for total resets - the utopian projects that claimed history could be rebooted if only the old mind could be replaced. Montale’s twist is to take that logic to its terminal point: liberation from “everything,” then from “his own consciousness.” It’s an almost deadpan escalation, as if the final consumer good is the self.
Subtext: he’s wary of any worldview that treats art as expendable in the march toward salvation, whether that salvation is technological, ideological, or merely the next trend. Coming out of fascism, war, and the churn of modern Italy, Montale’s skepticism lands like a cold, corrective slap: a culture that can commodify beauty can also fantasize about discarding the human inner life altogether. Art, in this frame, is both symptom and witness - the last fragile residue of consciousness, sold off in advance of its supposed disappearance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Eugenio
Add to List
