"Art is an instant that endures without a future."
"An artist is one who is fascinated by the plasticity of the real."
We seem to have given much thought to possibility of art after the Holocaust, but is it indeed vulgar to consider art as existing within the camps? The survivors speak of life in the camps as having all memory, all reflection, all hope driven from their consciousness by the incessant terror and brutalization. The minds and spirits held room for only pain thought for survival. So is there an affinity to art in the unending "instants that endure without a future?"
On the other hand, the camps were a place of extreme rigidity, in which the only plasticity allowed was a very explosive and unpredictable plasticity that did not lend itself to fascination. There was no instant or place for art whatsoever.
