Now there are times when a whole generation is caught...between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understa… - Rollo May

We find a giant like Picasso shifting in his own lifetime from style to style, partly as a reflection of the shifting character of the last four decades in Western society, and partly like a man dialing a ship’s radio on the ocean, trying vainly to find the wave length on which he can talk to his fellow men. But the artists, and the rest of us too, remain spiritually isolated and at sea, and so we cover up our loneliness by chattering with other people about the things we do have language for — the world series, business affairs, the latest news reports. Our deeper emotional experiences are pushed further away, and we tend, thus, to become emptier and lonelier.

Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations.

Every authentic artist is engaged in this creating of the conscience of the race, even though he or she may be unaware of the fact. The artist is not a moralist by conscious intention, but is concerned only with hearing and expressing the vision within his or her own being. But out of the symbols the artist sees and creates — as Giotto created the forms for the Renaissance — there is later hewn the ethical structure of the society.