Countless artists in the 20th century celebrated the vision of a “complete renewal of human sensibility” (Marinetti). They hoped that their works would awaken sensitivity in those who see, hear, touch, or participate in any other way. This book focuses on aspects such as identity, self-experience, failure, being thrown into the world and its aftermath, dazzling illusions, initiation, intimacy and distance, symbioses between humans and non-humans, empathy and death, and infinity. In the art of that era, the aim was to strengthen the human element within humanity, alongside sensibility as a source of hope. This modernist ideal knows no common style, only a cultic tradition in which everyone can see themselves reflected. It is these ‘mirror’ that must be examined.

Antje von Graevenitz, Professor Emerita, taught General Art History with a focus on the 20th/21st centuries at the University of Cologne (1989–2005) and lectured at the University of Amsterdam (1977–1988). She received her PhD in Munich in 1973 with a dissertation on Baroque ornamentation, but specialized in contemporary, anthropological, ephemeral, and interdisciplinary topics.