Late modernism : art, culture, and politics in Cold War America
Robert Genter.
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2010.
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 modernismùJoyce, Picasso, Stravinskyùand 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. --
more
In Late Modernism, historian Robert Center 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 practitionersùabstract expressionists, Beat poets, formalist critics, color-field painters, and critical theorists, among othersùdebated 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 1960's. --Book Jacket.
In Late Modernism, historian Robert Center 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 practitionersùabstract expressionists, Beat poets, formalist critics, color-field painters, and critical theorists, among othersùdebated 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 1960's. --Book Jacket.
Physical items: 1, Online items: 0
Availability
Online Resources
At the libraryRequest via Interlibrary Loan
| Location | Call number | Status |
|---|---|---|
| English Book (5/F) | 700.41120973 GEN 2010 | Available |
| Location | Call number | Status |
|---|---|---|
| barcode, location, bookplate, id LOCATION | callnoa callnob | -- |
Bibliographic Information
- Format:
-
Book
- Subject:
- Modernism (Art) > United States.
- Arts, American > 20th century.
- Arts and society > United States > History > 20th century.
- Arts > Political aspects > United States > History > 20th century.
- United States > Intellectual life > 20th century.
- Publication Year:
- 2010
- Language:
- English
- Published:
- Philadelphia
- ISBN:
- 9780812242645, 0812242645
- Course:
- HIST340
History of Urban Arts and Designs - Series:
- Arts and intellectual life in modern America.
- Bibliography:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
More Like This
We are sorry, we do not have information about other items like this.