IF life has lost momentum and lacks “satisfactory material” for art to work with . . .
IF the role or purpose of art is to enhance life . . .
THEN: 1. perhaps “we who make up the contemporary world are not lively,” 2. perhaps “we are not in love with life,” 3. perhaps we don’t “think life can be noble or good,” and 4. perhaps we think of life as a “sentence we must endure.”

Thus, Jacques Barzun reacted to Nietzsche and his notion that the use of art in modern times is to enhance, enrich, or ennoble life. Barzun, in The Use and Abuse of Art (a little blue book published in 1974), wonders whether mankind has lost faith in life’s essential character. He wonders if there is anything—belief or faith—that can still be affirmed.
Generally, such speculations may be proved by the abundance of art’s antagonisms toward society and by the artist being viewed as mad. Or, if it’s true that life lacks confidence, then it’s also true that art will struggle to find suitable material. Or, if the modernist, avant-garde antagonisms of art reach a stalemate with society, where all parties more or less accept a stance of tolerance or interest, then many serious artists will wrestle with the inclination to become hacks for the sophisticated elites.