Metal and silence : the quest for daringness and authenticity in the arts

Abstract

This book deals with certain aspects pertinent to a society experiencing irreversible and uncompromising radical historical changes; ones that are probably unprecedented. This change is embedded in a flux of different, and sometimes contradictory, developments. Together with other dominant historical, philosophical, and theoretical categories, this work will be dealing with the conflicting forces of insularity and cosmopolitanism embattled within an island state, which will also be analysed in relation to the contradictory confrontation between the poetic works of Dun Karm Psaila (1871-1961) and the visual counterpoint enunciated by the painter Edward Caruana Dingli (1876-1950). This will lead to a comprehension of how Malta found itself constrained to react to the Paul Klee storm and how the oxymoronic relationship between the two Maltese figures reflected the more global permanent liminal situation Malta found itself in during the pre-war era, the resolution of which permitted the introduction of alternative artistic languages as envisaged by Josef Kalleya (1898-1998), Toni Pace (1930-1989), and Vincent Apap (1909-2003). The conflicting and oftentimes mutually negating artistic languages put forward by these three fundamental mentors of Maltese Modern art are contextualised from an aesthetic point of view and also from a geopolitical historical one.