Literature on Modernism
Essays and bibliography: Painter of Modern Life (1863) - Charles Baudelaire - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935) - Walter Benjmain - deviant Modernism - The Senses of Modernism (2002) - Sara Danius - Five Faces of Modernity (1977|1987) - Matei Calinescu - The Intellectuals and the Masses (1992) - John Carey
Paris, Capital of Modernity (2003) David Harvey
Paris, Capital of Modernity (2003) David Harvey [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Drawing on essays written over the last 30 years, Harvey brings one of the most fascinating and confounding periods of French-or for that matter, European-history into sharp relief. He asserts that two conceptions of modernity were nurtured in Paris in the years after the First Empire-one bourgeois, and the other founded on the idea of the "social republic" geared toward benefiting all classes of citizens. Harvey traces these conflicting movements over the decades leading up to the Revolution of 1848 and charts their reverberations through the final days of the Paris Commune. The book is richly illustrated with over a hundred period photographs and cartoons by Daumier and others, which serve to reinforce the notion of Paris as a city of contrasts in a period of profound change. And Harvey is as comfortable and adept at quoting pertinent passages from the romantic novelists as he is offering detailed economic analyses of real estate and labor market dynamics. By making use of primary sources from diverse disciplines, he offers a thorough examination of the period: he explores, for instance, the role of women and class strictures and the consequences of urban planning and public transportation. The worst that can be said of this exhaustive investigation into the complicated and turbulent era of the Second Empire is that Harvey presupposes an intermediate knowledge of many of the important actors and events. As he weaves the humanities, philosophy, economics and sociology into a detailed tapestry, the author leaves remedial explanations of Parisian and French social movements to the authors listed in a well-annotated bibliography. This is not a problem in and of itself, but readers expecting a breezy history of the "City of Lights" may find themselves overwhelmed by the complexity and depth of this book. --Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Collecting David Harvey's finest work on Paris during the second empire, Paris, Capital of Modernity offers brilliant insights ranging from the birth of consumerist spectacle on the Parisian boulevards, the creative visions of Balzac, Baudelaire and Zola, and the reactionary cultural politics of the bombastic Sacre Couer. The book is heavily illustrated and includes a number drawings, portraits and cartoons by Daumier, one of the greatest political caricaturists of the nineteenth century.--Product Description, Amazon.com
Modernism (1999) - Various
Modernism (1999) - Vassiliki Kolocotroni, Jane Goldman, Olga Taxidou [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From Bauhaus to Dada, from Virginia Woolf to John Dos Passos, the Modernist movement revolutionized the way we perceive, portray, and participate in the world. This landmark anthology is a comprehensive documentary resource for the study of Modernism, bringing together more than 150 key essays, articles, manifestos, and other writings of the political and aesthetic avant-garde between 1840 and 1950.
By favoring short extracts over lengthier originals, the editors cover a remarkable range and variety of modernist thinking. Included are not just the familiar high modernist landmarks such as Gustave Flaubert, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce, but also a diverse representation from the sciences, politics, philosophy, and the arts, including Charles Darwin, Thorstein Veblen, W. E. B. Du Bois, Isadora Duncan, John Reed, Adolf Hitler, and Sergei Eisenstein. Another welcome feature is a substantial selection of hard-to-find manifestos from the many modernist movements, among them futurism, cubism, Dada, surrealism, and anarchism.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
IntroductionA note on presentation
Part I: The Emergence of the Modern
Ia: The modern in cultural, political and scientific thought
1. Karl Marx: From letter to Ruge, September 1843
2. Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels: From The Communist Manifesto 1848
3. Richard Wilhelm Wagner: From 'Art and Revolution' 1849
4. Charles Darwin: From The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection 1859
5. Johann Jakob Bachofen: From Mother Right 1861
6. Friedrich Nietzsche: From Preface to Human, All Too Human 1878
7. Max Nordau: From Degeneration 1883
8. William Morris: From 'Useful Work versus Useless Toil' 1884
9. H.P.B.: From The Secret Doctrine 1888
10. J. G. Frazer: From The Golden Bough 1890-1915
11. Gustave Le Bon: From The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind 1895
12. Thorstein Veblen: From The Theory of the Leisure Class 1899
13. Henry Adams: From The Education of Henry Adams 1907
14. Sigmund Freud: From The Interpretation of Dreams 1900
15. Georg Simmel: From 'The Metropolis and Mental Life' 1903
16. August Bebel: From Woman Under Socialism 1904
17. W. E. B. Dubois: From The Souls of Black Folk 1903
18. Henri Bergson: From Creative Evolution 1907
19. Wilhelm Worringer: From Abstraction and Empathy 1908
20. Adolf Loos: From 'Ornament and Crime' 1908
21. Karl Kraus: 'The Good Conduct Medal' 1909
22. Millicent Garrett Fawcett: From 'Women's Suffrage' 1911
23. Lou Andreas-Salomé: From The Freud Journal of Lou Andreas-Salome 1912, 1913
24. Oswald Spengler: From The Decline of the West 1918-22
Ib: Modern aesthetics
1. Edgar Allan Poe: From review of Nathanial Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales 1842
2. Walt Whitman: From Preface to Leaves of Grass 1855
3. Gustave Flaubert: From letter to Mlle Leroyer de Chantepie, 18 March 1857
4. Matthew Arnold: From 'On the Modern Element in Literature' 1857
5. Charles Baudelaire: From 'The Painter of Modern Life' 1859-60
6. Arthur Rimbaud: From letter to Paul Demeny, 15 May 1871
7. John Ruskin: From Lectures on Art 1870; From Arartra Pentelici 1872
8. Walter Pater: From Conclusion to The Renaissance [1873] 1893
9. August Strindberg: From Preface to Miss Julie 1888
10. Oscar Wilde: Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray 1890
11. Thomas Hardy: 'The Science of Fiction' 1891
12. Stéphane Mallarmé: From 'Crisis in Poetry' 1886-95
13. Paul Valéry: From 'Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci' 1895
14. Alfred Jarry: 'Preliminary Address at the First Performance of Ubi Roi, 10 December 1896'
15. Joseph Conrad: From Preface to The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' 1897
16. Arthur Symons: From The Symbolist Movement in Literature 1899
17. W. B. Yeats: From 'The Symbolism of Poetry' 1900
18. Marcel Proust: From 'Days of Reading: I' 1905
19. William Archer: From 'Henrik Ibsen: Philosopher or Poet' 1905
20. Henry James: From 'The Art of Fiction' 1894; From Preface to The Princess Casamassima 1906
21. Edward Gordon Craig: From 'The Actor and the über-marionette' 1907
22. Isadora Duncan: From My Life 1927
23. George Bernard Shaw: From The Sanity of Art 1908
II: The Avant-Garde
IIa. Formulations and declarations
1. Gustave Courbet: From Realist Manifesto 1855
2. émile Zola: From 'Naturalism on the Stage' 1880
3. Desmond MacCarthy: 'The Post-Impressionists' 1910
4. T.E. Hulme: From 'Romanticism and Classicism' 1911
5. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: From The Man-Made World or Our Androcentric Culture 1911
6. Roger Fry: 'The French Group' 1912
7. Clive Bell: 'The English Group' 1912
8. Robert Delaunay: 'Light' 1912; 'Notes on the Construction of the Reality of Pure Painting' 1912
9. Erik Satie: 'The Musician's Day' 1913; 'Some Notes on Modern Music' 1919
10. Wyndham Lewis: From 'The Cubist Room' 1914
11. Karl Kraus: From 'In These Great Times' 1914
12. Richard Huelsenbeck: From 'Zurich 1916, as it really was' 1928
13. Guillaume Apollinaire: 'Art and the War: Concerning an Allied Exhibition' 1916; Programme for Parade, 18 May 1917
14. Antonio Gramsci: 'Marinetti the Revolutionary' 1916; 'Theatre and Cinema' 1921
15. Victor Shklovsky: From 'Art as Technique' 1917
16. John Reed: From Ten Days That Shook the World 1919
17. 'A Member of the Audience: Storming the Winter Palace' 1920
18. Georg Lukács: From The Theory of the Novel 1920
19. Leon Trotsky: From Literature and Revolution 1923
20. Alexandra Kollontai: From 'Make Way for the Winged Eros' 1923
21. Dziga Vertov: From 'A Kino-Eye Discussion' 1924
22. Luis Buñuel: 'Suburbs' 1923
23. Vsevolod Meyerhold: From 'The Reconstruction of the Theatre' 1929
24. Erwin Piscator: From 'Basic Principles of Sociological Drama' 1929
IIb: Manifestos
1. Futurism
1a. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: 'The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism 1909'; The Variety Theatre' 1913
1b. Ilya Zdanevich and Mikhail Larionov: 'Why We Paint Ourselves: A Futurist Manifesto' 1913
2. Mina Loy: 'Feminist Manifesto' 1914
3. Cubism: Guillaume Apollinaire: From The Cubist Painters 1913
4. Imagism: Preface to Some Imagist Poets 1915
5. Expressionism: Wassily Kandinsky: From 'The Problem of Form' 1912
6. Dada
6a. Tristan Tzara: From 'Dada Manifesto, 1918'; 'Note on Art' 1917; 'Note on Negro Art' 1917
6b. Kurt Shwitters: From Merz 1921; From 'Consistent Poetry' 1924; 'To All the Theatres of the World' 1926
6c. George Grosz with Wieland Herzfelde:
See also: modern art - modernity - modernism - 1900s - 1800s
All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982) - Marshall Berman
All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982) - Marshall Berman [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
"FOR AS long as there has been a modern culture, the figure of Faust has been one of its culture heroes..."
This antipathy of postmodernists towards modernism, and their consequent tendency to define themselves against it, has also attracted criticism. It has been argued that modernity was not actually a lumbering, totalizing monolith at all, but in fact was itself dynamic and ever-changing; the evolution, therefore, between "modern" and "postmodern" should be seen as one of degree, rather than of kind - a continuation rather than a "break." One theorist who takes this view is Marshall Berman, whose book All That is Solid Melts into Air (1982) (a quote from Marx) reflects in its title the fluid nature of "the experience of modernity." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Criticism [Mar 2006]
See also: modernism - modernity - 1982
Modern Art Despite Modernism (2000) - Robert Storr
Modern Art Despite Modernism (2000) - Robert Storr [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
This text explores anti-modernist impulse, as exhibited in painting and sculpture through the social, political and cultural conflicts of the 1920s, 30s and 40s. It discusses taste and vulgarity, and the implications both past and present for institutions like the New York Museum of Modern Art. --via the publisher
Book Description
Throughout the 20th century, the evolution of mainstream modernism in the arts has been shadowed and complicated by alternative expressions, intended either to set back the clock or to redirect the stream of progress. Modern Art Despite Modernism explores the anti-modernist impulse as exhibited in painting and sculpture through the social, political, and cultural conflicts of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Texts by Robert Storr remind the reader of the strengths of some of this work--paintings and drawings by Otto Dix, Lucian Freud, Francesco Clemente, and even Pablo Picasso--and of the enduring popularity of such artists as Pavel Tchelitchew, whose Hide and Seek, along with Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World, are among the public's favorite pictures. Storr also discusses taste and vulgarity and their implications, both part and present, for institutions like The Museum of Modern Art that are thought of as canon builders. This book was published as the second in a series of three titles, in conjunction with the millennial exhibitions schedule of MoMA2000 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. --via the publisher
See also: modern art - modernism
Literary Modernism and Photography: (2002) - Paul Hansom
Literary Modernism and Photography: (2002) - Paul Hansom
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also Sara Danius book on how modernism was influenced by new media in general.
Review
“Although literary modernism is famously associated with probing interiority while photography is two dimensional , the two moved into prominence concurrently, intersecting in ways that these essays explore. The volume considers documentary uses of the image; the relation between photographers' aesthetics and their deployment of images; photography as a literary trope; and the transition into postmodernism.”–American LiteratureBook Description
The developments in narrative experimentation that marked the modernist period in Europe and the United States provide an interesting crossroads with the development of visual representation during the same time. In this collection of fourteen original essays, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore the ways in which the photograph became a vital emblem of the transformative processes of modernism, offering a new aesthetic and psychological model for the new zeitgeist. The interdisciplinary methodology of Literary Modernism and Photography melds literary, cultural, and photographic theories to offer a challenging literary framework for this period. The essays address the problems surrounding the photograph's ostensible "factuality"-its presumed ability to represent the real world-and suggest the difficulties inherent in aestheticizing the real into fictive forms, while also examining how the photograph shaped and reflected the new, modern artistic self-consciousness of figures such as Alfred Stieglitz, Vanessa Bell, and Willa Cather. If literary modernism heralded a re-visioning of the world, then the photograph was the concrete rendering of this new vision.