Article
‘Make It New’ By Bledsoe, Eric Matthew
Article
‘Make It New’ refers to Ezra Pound’s (1885–1972) modernist imperative and his 1934 collection of essays of the same name. This slogan compels the writer to create out of the material of art work that is distinctively innovative. The artist must break with the formal and contextual standards of their contemporaries in making works fundamentally individual. These ‘new’ modern works cannot be wholly autonomous, however, as they must consider the aesthetics of the past in the context of the present moment.