How does that reflect in the visual arts? How does art confront the point where absolutely everything can be taken away from us? Not simply as physical death, but as death while still alive. One of the fundamental issues of 20th century art was how to create art after the gas chambers. In the context of World War II concentration camps, many theorists actually forbid the image, even ruling out art. At the same time, the documentary is also invalidated. Zoran Mušič was acutely aware of this when he said he had not wanted to illustrate. Mušič’s eye is the eye of a painter, not a photojournalist. Shoah is not a documentary film either: documentariness falls short and can even be insulting to the victims. There simply was no why in Auschwitz.
