America's Cool Modernism

America's Cool Modernism

Author: Katherine M. Bourguignon

Publisher: Ashmolean Museum Oxford

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781910807217

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This catalogue looks at a current in interwar American art that is relatively unknown. The familiar story of America in the 'roaring Twenties' is that of 'The Great Gatsby', the Harlem Renaissance, and the Machine Age; while the 1930s are known as the Steinbeckian world marked by the Depression and the New Deal. This exhibition focuses on the artists who grappled with the experience of modern America with a cool, controlled detachment, almost completely eliminating people from their pictures. For some artists this treatment reflected an ambivalence and anxiety about the modern world. Factories without workers and streets without people. Factories without workers and streets without people could seem strange and empty places. George Ault (1891-1948) and Niles Spencer (1893-1952) painted eerie factories with darkened windows. Their precise, orderly painting style adds to the unsettling atmosphere of their work. In 'Manhattan Bridge Loop' (1928), Edward Hopper (1882-1967) captured the stilled, quiet mood of the city, including a solitary pedestrian. For others, this cool treatment of contemporary America was a positive more response - an expression of optimism and pride. Skyscrapers and bridges become studies in geometry; and cities are cleansed and ordered with no crowds and no chaos. Louis Lozowick's (1892-1973) prints capture the energy of the city in curving sprawls and buildings soaring into the sky; while Ralston Crawford (1906-78) and Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) depicted the architecture of industrial America - factories, grain elevators, water plants - as the country's new cathedrals, glorious in their scale and feats of engineering, yet oddly emptied of people. The detached, frozen appearance of the scenes creates an uncertain or ambiguous atmosphere.


Book Synopsis America's Cool Modernism by : Katherine M. Bourguignon

Download or read book America's Cool Modernism written by Katherine M. Bourguignon and published by Ashmolean Museum Oxford. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This catalogue looks at a current in interwar American art that is relatively unknown. The familiar story of America in the 'roaring Twenties' is that of 'The Great Gatsby', the Harlem Renaissance, and the Machine Age; while the 1930s are known as the Steinbeckian world marked by the Depression and the New Deal. This exhibition focuses on the artists who grappled with the experience of modern America with a cool, controlled detachment, almost completely eliminating people from their pictures. For some artists this treatment reflected an ambivalence and anxiety about the modern world. Factories without workers and streets without people. Factories without workers and streets without people could seem strange and empty places. George Ault (1891-1948) and Niles Spencer (1893-1952) painted eerie factories with darkened windows. Their precise, orderly painting style adds to the unsettling atmosphere of their work. In 'Manhattan Bridge Loop' (1928), Edward Hopper (1882-1967) captured the stilled, quiet mood of the city, including a solitary pedestrian. For others, this cool treatment of contemporary America was a positive more response - an expression of optimism and pride. Skyscrapers and bridges become studies in geometry; and cities are cleansed and ordered with no crowds and no chaos. Louis Lozowick's (1892-1973) prints capture the energy of the city in curving sprawls and buildings soaring into the sky; while Ralston Crawford (1906-78) and Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) depicted the architecture of industrial America - factories, grain elevators, water plants - as the country's new cathedrals, glorious in their scale and feats of engineering, yet oddly emptied of people. The detached, frozen appearance of the scenes creates an uncertain or ambiguous atmosphere.


Inventing American Modernism

Inventing American Modernism

Author: Jill E. Pearlman

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780813926025

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"In this book Jill Pearlman argues that Gropius did not effect changes alone and, further, that the Harvard Graduate School of Design was not merely an offshoot of the Bauhaus. - She offers a crucial missing piece to the story - and to the history of modern architecture - by focusing on Joseph Hudnut, the school's dean and founder."--BOOK JACKET.


Book Synopsis Inventing American Modernism by : Jill E. Pearlman

Download or read book Inventing American Modernism written by Jill E. Pearlman and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book Jill Pearlman argues that Gropius did not effect changes alone and, further, that the Harvard Graduate School of Design was not merely an offshoot of the Bauhaus. - She offers a crucial missing piece to the story - and to the history of modern architecture - by focusing on Joseph Hudnut, the school's dean and founder."--BOOK JACKET.


American Modernism

American Modernism

Author: R. Roger Remington

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 9780300098167

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Presents an account of a key period in American graphic design as it manifested itself in various media, covering major historical influences and significant works.


Book Synopsis American Modernism by : R. Roger Remington

Download or read book American Modernism written by R. Roger Remington and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an account of a key period in American graphic design as it manifested itself in various media, covering major historical influences and significant works.


The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism

The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism

Author: Walter Kalaidjian

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-04-28

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780521829953

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Original essays by twelve distinguished international scholars offer critical overviews of the major genres, literary culture, and social contexts that define the current state of scholarship. This Companion also features a chronology of key events and publication dates covering the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. The introductory reference guide concludes with a current bibliography of further reading organized by chapter topics.


Book Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism by : Walter Kalaidjian

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism written by Walter Kalaidjian and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-28 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original essays by twelve distinguished international scholars offer critical overviews of the major genres, literary culture, and social contexts that define the current state of scholarship. This Companion also features a chronology of key events and publication dates covering the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. The introductory reference guide concludes with a current bibliography of further reading organized by chapter topics.


Masterpieces of American Modernism

Masterpieces of American Modernism

Author: William C. Agee

Publisher: Merrell

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781858945958

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Modernism, referring to the period dating roughly from the late 19th century through 1970, is regarded as a crucial moment in the history of American art. Although Modernist artists adopted a wide range of styles, they were tied by a desire to interpret the rapidly changing nature of society, and to cast aside the conventions of representational art. Some, such as Stuart Davis and Joseph Stella, responded to consumerism, urbanism, and industrial technology, while others, such as Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe, found inspiration in nature and the traditional Native American culture of the Southwest. This magnificent new book presents the works of the Vilcek Collection, an unparalleled private collection of American Modernist art. Jan and Marica Vilcek acquired their first American Modernist work in 2001, and have since assembled an amazing collection of masterworks representative of a crucial moment in the history of American art. Art historian Lewis Kachur explores almost 100 rarely seen paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by more than 20 leading artists active during the first half of the last century, while William C. Agee contributes an authoritative introduction. Lavishly illustrated throughout, Masterpieces of American Modernism offers an outstanding overview of the radical shift in art that this movement represents.


Book Synopsis Masterpieces of American Modernism by : William C. Agee

Download or read book Masterpieces of American Modernism written by William C. Agee and published by Merrell. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modernism, referring to the period dating roughly from the late 19th century through 1970, is regarded as a crucial moment in the history of American art. Although Modernist artists adopted a wide range of styles, they were tied by a desire to interpret the rapidly changing nature of society, and to cast aside the conventions of representational art. Some, such as Stuart Davis and Joseph Stella, responded to consumerism, urbanism, and industrial technology, while others, such as Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe, found inspiration in nature and the traditional Native American culture of the Southwest. This magnificent new book presents the works of the Vilcek Collection, an unparalleled private collection of American Modernist art. Jan and Marica Vilcek acquired their first American Modernist work in 2001, and have since assembled an amazing collection of masterworks representative of a crucial moment in the history of American art. Art historian Lewis Kachur explores almost 100 rarely seen paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by more than 20 leading artists active during the first half of the last century, while William C. Agee contributes an authoritative introduction. Lavishly illustrated throughout, Masterpieces of American Modernism offers an outstanding overview of the radical shift in art that this movement represents.


Late Modernism

Late Modernism

Author: Robert Genter

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-06-06

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0812200071

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the thirty years after World War II, American intellectual and artistic life changed as dramatically as did the rest of society. Gone were the rebellious lions of modernism—Joyce, Picasso, Stravinsky—and nearing exhaustion were those who took up their mantle as abstract expressionism gave way to pop art, and the barren formalism associated with the so-called high modernists wilted before the hothouse cultural brew of the 1960s. According to conventional thinking, it was around this time that postmodernism with its characteristic skepticism and relativism was born. In Late Modernism, historian Robert Genter remaps the landscape of American modernism in the early decades of the Cold War, tracing the combative debate among artists, writers, and intellectuals over the nature of the aesthetic form in an age of mass politics and mass culture. Dispensing with traditional narratives that present this moment as marking the exhaustion of modernism, Genter argues instead that the 1950s were the apogee of the movement, as American practitioners—abstract expressionists, Beat poets, formalist critics, color-field painters, and critical theorists, among others—debated the relationship between form and content, tradition and innovation, aesthetics and politics. In this compelling work of intellectual and cultural history Genter presents an invigorated tradition of late modernism, centered on the work of Kenneth Burke, Ralph Ellison, C. Wright Mills, David Riesman, Jasper Johns, Norman Brown, and James Baldwin, a tradition that overcame the conservative and reactionary politics of competing modernist practitioners and paved the way for the postmodern turn of the 1960s.


Book Synopsis Late Modernism by : Robert Genter

Download or read book Late Modernism written by Robert Genter and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the thirty years after World War II, American intellectual and artistic life changed as dramatically as did the rest of society. Gone were the rebellious lions of modernism—Joyce, Picasso, Stravinsky—and nearing exhaustion were those who took up their mantle as abstract expressionism gave way to pop art, and the barren formalism associated with the so-called high modernists wilted before the hothouse cultural brew of the 1960s. According to conventional thinking, it was around this time that postmodernism with its characteristic skepticism and relativism was born. In Late Modernism, historian Robert Genter remaps the landscape of American modernism in the early decades of the Cold War, tracing the combative debate among artists, writers, and intellectuals over the nature of the aesthetic form in an age of mass politics and mass culture. Dispensing with traditional narratives that present this moment as marking the exhaustion of modernism, Genter argues instead that the 1950s were the apogee of the movement, as American practitioners—abstract expressionists, Beat poets, formalist critics, color-field painters, and critical theorists, among others—debated the relationship between form and content, tradition and innovation, aesthetics and politics. In this compelling work of intellectual and cultural history Genter presents an invigorated tradition of late modernism, centered on the work of Kenneth Burke, Ralph Ellison, C. Wright Mills, David Riesman, Jasper Johns, Norman Brown, and James Baldwin, a tradition that overcame the conservative and reactionary politics of competing modernist practitioners and paved the way for the postmodern turn of the 1960s.


Modern Bodies

Modern Bodies

Author: Julia L. Foulkes

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2003-11-03

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0807862029

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1930, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham proclaimed the arrival of "dance as an art of and from America." Dancers such as Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn, Katherine Dunham, and Helen Tamiris joined Graham in creating a new form of dance, and, like other modernists, they experimented with and argued over their aesthetic innovations, to which they assigned great meaning. Their innovations, however, went beyond aesthetics. While modern dancers devised new ways of moving bodies in accordance with many modernist principles, their artistry was indelibly shaped by their place in society. Modern dance was distinct from other artistic genres in terms of the people it attracted: white women (many of whom were Jewish), gay men, and African American men and women. Women held leading roles in the development of modern dance on stage and off; gay men recast the effeminacy often associated with dance into a hardened, heroic, American athleticism; and African Americans contributed elements of social, African, and Caribbean dance, even as their undervalued role defined the limits of modern dancers' communal visions. Through their art, modern dancers challenged conventional roles and images of gender, sexuality, race, class, and regionalism with a view of American democracy that was confrontational and participatory, authorial and populist. Modern Bodies exposes the social dynamics that shaped American modernism and moved modern dance to the edges of society, a place both provocative and perilous.


Book Synopsis Modern Bodies by : Julia L. Foulkes

Download or read book Modern Bodies written by Julia L. Foulkes and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-11-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1930, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham proclaimed the arrival of "dance as an art of and from America." Dancers such as Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn, Katherine Dunham, and Helen Tamiris joined Graham in creating a new form of dance, and, like other modernists, they experimented with and argued over their aesthetic innovations, to which they assigned great meaning. Their innovations, however, went beyond aesthetics. While modern dancers devised new ways of moving bodies in accordance with many modernist principles, their artistry was indelibly shaped by their place in society. Modern dance was distinct from other artistic genres in terms of the people it attracted: white women (many of whom were Jewish), gay men, and African American men and women. Women held leading roles in the development of modern dance on stage and off; gay men recast the effeminacy often associated with dance into a hardened, heroic, American athleticism; and African Americans contributed elements of social, African, and Caribbean dance, even as their undervalued role defined the limits of modern dancers' communal visions. Through their art, modern dancers challenged conventional roles and images of gender, sexuality, race, class, and regionalism with a view of American democracy that was confrontational and participatory, authorial and populist. Modern Bodies exposes the social dynamics that shaped American modernism and moved modern dance to the edges of society, a place both provocative and perilous.


The Société Anonyme

The Société Anonyme

Author: Jennifer R. Gross

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 9780300109214

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This beautifully illustrated book highlights the unique history of The Société Anonyme, Inc., an organization founded in 1920 by the artists Katherine S. Dreier (1877–1952), Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), and Man Ray (1890–1976). As America’s first “experimental museum” for modern art, the Société Anonyme provided a means for artists, rather than historians, to chronicle the rise of modernism. Led by Dreier and Duchamp, the group eventually assembled a collection of more than one thousand artworks, which it presented to the public in a variety of innovative programs, publications, and exhibitions. The incredible collection of the Société Anonyme now belongs to the Yale University Art Gallery, a gift from the Société and Dreier. It features the work of more than one hundred artists, many of whom are among the century’s most renowned—including Jean Arp, Duchamp, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, El Lissitzky, Piet Mondrian, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, and Joseph Stella—as well as works by lesser-known artists whose contributions to modernism are substantial. With new archival information, including personal correspondence between Dreier and the artists whose work she assembled, a host of previously unpublished images, essays by leading scholars, and an interview with artists Robert and Sylvia Mangold about the contemporary significance of this collection, this fascinating book is essential to our understanding of the reception and interpretation of modernism in America.


Book Synopsis The Société Anonyme by : Jennifer R. Gross

Download or read book The Société Anonyme written by Jennifer R. Gross and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beautifully illustrated book highlights the unique history of The Société Anonyme, Inc., an organization founded in 1920 by the artists Katherine S. Dreier (1877–1952), Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), and Man Ray (1890–1976). As America’s first “experimental museum” for modern art, the Société Anonyme provided a means for artists, rather than historians, to chronicle the rise of modernism. Led by Dreier and Duchamp, the group eventually assembled a collection of more than one thousand artworks, which it presented to the public in a variety of innovative programs, publications, and exhibitions. The incredible collection of the Société Anonyme now belongs to the Yale University Art Gallery, a gift from the Société and Dreier. It features the work of more than one hundred artists, many of whom are among the century’s most renowned—including Jean Arp, Duchamp, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, El Lissitzky, Piet Mondrian, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, and Joseph Stella—as well as works by lesser-known artists whose contributions to modernism are substantial. With new archival information, including personal correspondence between Dreier and the artists whose work she assembled, a host of previously unpublished images, essays by leading scholars, and an interview with artists Robert and Sylvia Mangold about the contemporary significance of this collection, this fascinating book is essential to our understanding of the reception and interpretation of modernism in America.


The African American Roots of Modernism

The African American Roots of Modernism

Author: James Edward Smethurst

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0807834637

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The period between 1880 and 1918, at the end of which Jim Crow was firmly established and the Great Migration of African Americans was well under way, was not the nadir for black culture, James Smethurst reveals, but instead a time of profound response fr


Book Synopsis The African American Roots of Modernism by : James Edward Smethurst

Download or read book The African American Roots of Modernism written by James Edward Smethurst and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period between 1880 and 1918, at the end of which Jim Crow was firmly established and the Great Migration of African Americans was well under way, was not the nadir for black culture, James Smethurst reveals, but instead a time of profound response fr


American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe

American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe

Author: Esther Adler

Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art

Published: 2013-08-11

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 087070852X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Museum of Modern Art is known for its prescient focus on the avant-garde art of Europe, but in the first half of the twentieth century it was also acquiring work by Stuart Davis, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz, and other, less well-known American artists whose work sometimes fits awkwardly under the avant garde umbrella. American Modern presents a fresh look at MoMA’s holdings of American art from that period. The still lifes, portraits, and urban, rural, and industrial landscapes vary in style, approach, and medium: melancholy images by Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth bump against the eccentric landscapes of Charles Burchfield and the Jazz Age sculpture of Elie Nadelman. Yet a distinct sensibility emerges, revealing a side of the Museum that may surprise a good part of its audience and throwing light on the cultural preoccupations of the rapidly changing American society of the day.


Book Synopsis American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe by : Esther Adler

Download or read book American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe written by Esther Adler and published by The Museum of Modern Art. This book was released on 2013-08-11 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Museum of Modern Art is known for its prescient focus on the avant-garde art of Europe, but in the first half of the twentieth century it was also acquiring work by Stuart Davis, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz, and other, less well-known American artists whose work sometimes fits awkwardly under the avant garde umbrella. American Modern presents a fresh look at MoMA’s holdings of American art from that period. The still lifes, portraits, and urban, rural, and industrial landscapes vary in style, approach, and medium: melancholy images by Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth bump against the eccentric landscapes of Charles Burchfield and the Jazz Age sculpture of Elie Nadelman. Yet a distinct sensibility emerges, revealing a side of the Museum that may surprise a good part of its audience and throwing light on the cultural preoccupations of the rapidly changing American society of the day.