Tigersprung: Self-referential

"the modernite...is, by definition, ephemeral and eternal at the same time. in its urge to be radically new, it has to be conscious of what came before. fashion is the perfect vehicle for fusing novel aesthetics with an underlying recourse to the past. but it is only the truly modern artist who uses this device deliberately. his or her art becomes self-referential, ironically conscious of the quotation from the past...it was sartorial fashion that made modernity aware of its constant urge and necessity to quote from itself." - U. Lehmann, Tigersprung