« La comédie » des valeurs esthétiques chez Jean Tardieu

Abstract

Culture and arts are currently facing the same disorder and the same paradoxes that govern the post-industrial universe. The keynote of modernism, namely that one which insists on the uniqueness of the work of art and its quality of value and human wisdom depository, is seen to be dethroned by the postmodernists. To assure the art that it has the role of social panacea (as an engaged art, for instance) and of modal panacea (the catharsis) means to weaken its health and Tardieu does nothing but constantly warns the spectator about the danger of self-deluding, as the spectator is imprisoned in these pernicious preconceptions. Tardieu's theatre signals, together with the works of art claiming to be postmodernist, the end of the "great art" as founding paradigm of humanity while submitting it to a process of demythologizing which concerns progress, family and especially the art as human being's redeemer.