No

A century ago, hope was mainstream in Western art. The most influential artists of that era believed that new aesthetics would create a new, free and just society. They no longer wanted merely to reproduce reality, as their predecessors had done. They dreamed, instead, of producing a different, better reality. The First World War didn’t shake their belief that a bright future was possible. In fact, it only deepened their conviction that the old order was no good, and that a radical restructuring of culture and society was necessary.

Bauhaus was one example of this philosophy. Its founder and first director, the architect Walter Gropius, emerged from the war convinced that the mission of intellectuals in general, and artists in particular, was to build a world free from violence.

Bauhaus revolutionized arts education and design, but even more than that, it was a revolutionary interpretation of the essence of art. The leaders of Bauhaus insisted that the artist create for the people, offering them a total way of life, not only beautiful objects in isolation, like paintings and sculptures. Moreover, the artist should work for everyone, not just for the wealthy. In fact, the Bauhaus movement’s most important objective was designing affordable housing.

The utopia envisioned by the early modernists collapsed. The Nazis shut down the Bauhaus school. Vkhutemas, its Soviet analog, was destroyed during the Stalin era. Totalitarian dictatorships destroyed the institutions on which idealistic artists depended for their livelihoods, and they also, more generally, undermined broadly shared hopes for a better world. Humanity, having seen enough of dystopia, fell out of love with utopia.

As it turned out, modernism was fated for a legacy very different from the one desired by the modernists themselves, who dreamed of equality and made art for a world without wealth or poverty. Instead their works have become luxury items — today, few can afford the "originals" designed by the teachers and students of the Bauhaus school.

It seems obvious that the 21st century will not produce anything like Bauhaus or the Soviet avant-garde — in fact, it’s unlikely that anything like that artistic moment will ever happen again. That kind of cultural phenomenon is possible when there’s unconditional faith in the future, and we don’t exactly live in those conditions. And yet, artists and altruists still exist. How do they work today? What are they working on?

Contemporary artists are not piecing together a future world, but repairing the present one, trying to make it a bit more liveable. The Japanese architect Shigeru Ban fashions shelters for refugees out of plastic and cardboard — the structures are beautiful, light, durable, and designed so that even the most inexperienced builder can assemble them. The Russian artist Alisa Yoffe paints, in her characteristic style, navigation signs at humanitarian aid centers for displaced Ukrainians in Tbilisi, Georgia. German actor and director Georg Genoux, who runs Thespis Zentrum in Bautzen, invites immigrants onto the professional stage to describe their experiences, rather than having professional actors play them. This approach is known as documentary theater.

These artists work with vulnerable groups, cultures, and languages to protect disappearing cultural and historical memory. They also document the era, making it harder for future dictators and propagandists to retroactively falsify its memory.

How much hope is there in this work? Far from none, but this hope takes a different form. Today’s artists and idealists are not hoping for a new world or a better world, but for horizontal connections, grassroots initiatives and targeted resistance to evil. They’re hopeful about individuals and independent communities.

This may be the only form of hope we have left today. We can’t save everything — but what if we at least try to help someone? We can’t count on a fundamental rebuilding of humanity — but maybe we should at least count on one another. What gives us hope, if not solidarity?

Anton Khitrov