ical ideas, i.e., "that the truth of things lay behind surface reality." Nietzsche's metaphysics served as a counterweight to the increasingly prevalent, materialist-oriented positivism that argued for the discovery of truth via observation and experimentation. Ibsen, August Strindberg and, in music, Richard Wagner were heavily influenced by Nietzsche and these artists conveyed their thought "through the experiences of isolated, frustrated, or doomed individuals." Nietzsche's philosophical autobiography Ecce Homo, which presented his ideas in digest form, was popular reading among artists and after the turn of the century painters as diverse as Picasso, deep in his Blue Period, the Fauves, and the new generation of German Expressionists in Die Brncke were producing art with a new type of content. Their works were more definitively urban in character and reflected the generalized anxiety that had begun to characterize life in the industrialized world. The roots of this new sensibility can be traced back to Nietzsche's ideas as well as to general s
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