The Dehumanization of Art

Velazquez, Goya, The Dehumanization of Art, and Other Essays by Jose Ortega y Gasset, 136 pages

This volume collects Jose Ortega y Gasset's writings on art, consisting of six essays written over the course of forty years, including an unfinished work on Goya.  Thematically, the essays center on his understanding of the development of art over the course of the modern era away from the Real and towards abstraction, defacing the human, inverting (but not abolishing) all hierarchies, and negating history and tradition.  Ortega is not concerned here to praise or condemn, but to comprehend, and he freely admits that his conclusions may be wrong, yet such is the power of Ortega's writing that at times even simple sentences seem to imply a fascinating galaxy of meaning.