Reconstructing Modernism

Reconstructing Modernism establishes for the first time the centrality of modernist buildings and architectural periodicals to British mid-century literature. Drawing upon a wealth of previously unexplored architectural criticism by British authors, this book reveals how arguments about architecture led to innovations in literature, as well as to redesigns in the concept of modernism itself. While the city has long been a focus of literary modernist studies, architectural modernism has never had its due. Scholars usually characterize architectural modernism as a parallel modernism or even an incompatible modernism to literature. Giving special attention to dystopian classics Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, this study argues that sustained attention to modern architecture shaped mid-century authors' political and aesthetic commitments. After many writers deemed modernist architects to be agents for communism and other collectivist movements, they squared themselves--and literary modernist detachment and aesthetic autonomy--against the seemingly tyrannical utopianism of modern architecture; literary aesthetic qualities were reclaimed as political qualities. In this way, Reconstructing Modernism redraws the boundaries of literary modernist studies: rather than simply adding to its canon, it argues that the responsibility for defining literary modernism for the mid-century public was shared by an incredible variety of authors--Edwardians, modernists, satirists, and even anti-modernists.

These essays reopen the case of postwar abstraction. They constitute a dialogue among historians, critics, painters, and art historians that allows not only new readings of specific art works but also a new understanding of the reception of art in the postwar Western world. Timothy J. Clark, Thierry de Duve, Constance Naubert-Riser, and Thomas Crow focus on specific works of major artists of the period. Laurie J. Monahan, Serge Guilbaut, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh look at art production in relation to particular aspects of the Cold War. Jean Baudrillard and Francois-Marc Gagnon discuss the effects of the international situation on the arts in general. John Franklin Koenig describes the experience of an American artist working in Paris after the war. John O'Brian relates the impact and the reception of Matisse's work in New York, and Lary May discusses the transformation of Hollywood during the McCarthy era. Serge Guilbaut is Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia.

Reconstructing Modernism establishes for the first time the centrality of modernist buildings and architectural periodicals to British mid-century literature. Drawing upon a wealth of previously unexplored architectural criticism by British authors, this book reveals how arguments about architecture led to innovations in literature, as well as to redesigns in the concept of modernism itself. While the city has long been a focus of literary modernist studies, architectural modernism has never had its due. Scholars usually characterize architectural modernism as a parallel modernism or even an incompatible modernism to literature. Giving special attention to dystopian classics Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, this study argues that sustained attention to modern architecture shaped mid-century authors' political and aesthetic commitments. After many writers deemed modernist architects to be agents for communism and other collectivist movements, they squared themselves—and literary modernist detachment and aesthetic autonomy—against the seemingly tyrannical utopianism of modern architecture; literary aesthetic qualities were reclaimed as political qualities. In this way, Reconstructing Modernism redraws the boundaries of literary modernist studies: rather than simply adding to its canon, it argues that the responsibility for defining literary modernism for the mid-century public was shared by an incredible variety of authors—Edwardians, modernists, satirists, and even anti-modernists.

Contemporary art can be baffling and beautiful, provocative and disturbing. This pioneering book presents a new look at the controversial period between 1945 and 2015, when art and its traditional forms were called into question. It focuses on the relationship between American and European art, and challenges previously held views about the origins of some of the most innovative ideas in art of this time. Major artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Shiran Neshat are all discussed, as is the art world of the last fifty years. Important trends are also covered including Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Postmodernism, and Performance Art. This revised and updated second edition includes a new chapter exploring art since 2000 and how globalization has caused shifts in the art world, an updated Bibliography, and 16 new, colour illustrations.

The First World War mangled faces, blew away limbs, and ruined nerves. Ten million dead, twenty million severe casualties, and eight million people with permanent disabilities - modern war inflicted pain and suffering with unsparing, mechanical efficiency. However, such horror was not the entire story. People also rebuilt their lives, their communities, and their bodies. From the ashes of war rose beauty, eroticism, and the promise of utopia. Ana Carden-Coyne investigates the cultures of resilience and the institutions of reconstruction in Britain, Australia, and the United States. Immersed in efforts to heal the consequences of violence and triumph over adversity, reconstruction inspired politicians, professionals, and individuals to transform themselves and their societies. Bodies were not to remain locked away as tortured memories. Instead, they became the subjects of outspoken debate, the objects of rehabilitation, and commodities of desire in global industries. Governments, physicians, beauty and body therapists, monument designers and visual artists looked to classicism and modernism as the tools for rebuilding civilization and its citizens. What better response to loss of life, limb, and mind than a body reconstructed?

The production of this book stems from two of the editors’ longstanding research interests: the representation of architecture in print media, and the complex identity of the second phase of modernism in architecture given the role it played in postwar reconstruction in Europe. While the history of postwar reconstruction has been increasingly well covered for most European countries, research investigating postwar architectural magazines and journals across Europe – their role in the discourse and production of the built environment and particularly their inter-relationship and differing conceptions of postwar architecture – is relatively undeveloped. Modernism and the Professional Architecture Journal sounds out this territory in a new collection of essays concerning the second phase of the reception and assimilation of modernism in architecture, as it was represented in professional architecture journals during the period of postwar reconstruction (1945–1968). Professional architecture journals are often seen as conduits of established facts and knowledge. The role mainstream publications play, however, in establishing ‘movements’, ‘trends’ or ‘debates’ tends to be undervalued. In the context of the complex undertaking of postwar reconstruction, the shortage of resources, political uncertainty and the biographical complexities of individual architects, the chapters on key European architecture journals collected here reveal how modernist architecture, and its discourse, was perceived and disseminated in different European countries.

Contributors from the UK, Canada, and the US demonstrate how different methodologies and approaches can be used to reveal the woman artist as a "subject" of histories of 20th-century art. They offer specific case studies of historical narratives, artworks, and individual artistic projects within modernism. Topics include women artists and suffrage cultures, gender and representation in the Harlem Renaissance, and the question of decadence in 1923. Paper edition (unseen), $27.95. Distributed by St. Martin's Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR