“It was the tragedy of modernist artists, Left or Right, that the much more effective political commitment of their own mass movements and politicians - not to mention their adversaries - rejected them. With the partial exception of Futurist-influenced Italian fascism, the new authoritarian regimes of both Right and Left preferred old-fashioned and gigantic monumental buildings and vistas in architecture, inspirational representations in both painting and sculpture, elaborate performances of the classics on stage, and ideological acceptability in literature.”

— Eric Hobsbawm , book The Age of Extremes

The Arts 1914-1945
The Age of Extremes (1992)

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Eric Hobsbawm 47

British academic historian and Marxist historiographer 1917–2012

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