This course combines a close reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra with an examination of the book’s impact on the development of modern art. Thus Spoke Zarathustra describes how the prophet Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to tell the world that God is dead and that the Overman is his successor. In a series of encounters and conversations, Zarathustra expounds and refines his philosophical system, concluding that he himself is the Overman. In the course of his poetic parable, Nietzsche skewers the materialism and mediocrity of late-nineteenth century European society, and proposes that only the creative individual can blaze a path to a better future. Modern artists, out of sympathy with a world that rarely appreciated their work and fed by Romantic notions of the artist as a force for change in society, latched onto Nietzsche’s ideas with passionate enthusiasm, molding them into an image of the avant-garde artist as world-changer.