How Does Time's Orderly Chaos Affect Artists?

"but here the other clock, the clock which always struck two minutes after Big Ben, came shuffling in with its lap full of odds and ends, which it dumped down as if Big Ben were all very well with his majesty laying down the law, so solemn, so just, but she must remember all sorts of little things came flooding and lapping and dancing in on the wake of that solemn stroke which lay flat like a bar of gold on the sea.  Mrs. Marsham, Ellie Henderson, glasses for ices.  She must telephone now at once" (Woolf 128). 

This passage in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway connects time to the motif of waves.  Big Ben is the grand representation of time.  Its central location in London implies that Big Ben has "majesty" and is the 'king' of time (Woolf 128).  This king is always "laying down the law" (Woolf 128).  Although it appears that Big Ben is "solemn" and coordinates - for example, a particular clock "always struck two minutes after Big Ben" - its kingdom is in chaos (Woolf 128).  Time's orderly chaos is comparable to a wave's.  They both have laps "full of odds and ends" that "came" "shuffling in" and "flooding and lapping and dancing in" chaos (Woolf 128).  However, like a wave, there is a rhythm to this discord, consisting of both sharps and "flat[s]", ups and downs, flows and ebbs (Woolf 128). 

This discord after World War I greatly affected European artists.  Many artists "turned away from prewar experimentalism" and "returned to the classical past, seeking tranquility, order, and enduring values" (artdaily.org). "classicism ... dominated the discourse of contemporary art" (guggenheim.org).  Subsequently, Guggenheim Museum exhibited this confusion in the art world in Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936.  This installation "traces this interwar trend ... from ... a political, historical idea of a revived Roman Empire ... to the chilling aesthetic of ... Nazi culture" with a vast variety of mediums, including "painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, film, fashion, and the decorative arts" (guggenheim.org).  

Blue Painting by Kandinsky, Exhibited in Chaos and Classicism:  Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918-1936