Modernism's History: A Study in Twentieth-century Art and Ideas

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Yale University Press, 1. jan. 1998 - 376 strani
The history of twentieth-century visual arts can no longer be written as a succession of avant-garde movements, contends eminent art historian Bernard Smith in this stimulating book. He argues that a return to the concept of period style is inevitable and that modernism--the dominant "style" of art that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and continued through the 1960s--deserves recognition as a period style. Smith renames this period Formalesque since it is no longer modern and since it emphasizes the formal values of art more than any previous period does.

In a wide-ranging reformulation of art history in the twentieth century, the author defines the nature and development of Formalesque--an avant-garde style that arose between 1890 and the First World War, was institutionalized between the world wars, and flourished anew between 1945 and 1960. Identifying the Formalesque period, says Smith, makes it possible also to identify dialectical adversaries, such true oppositional avant-garde styles of the twentieth century as Dada, Surrealism, and the Neue Sachlichkeit. These constitute the formative elements of the modernism--now called postmodernism--that became increasingly dominant after 1960. The author locates twentieth-century artistic movements and developments in a broad cultural context and concludes with a thought-provoking examination of the relation between the Formalesque and European and American cultural imperialism.

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Introduction
1
THE RISE OF THE FORMALESQUE
13
Modernity and its modernisms
15
Theoretical sources of the Formalesque
29
Exotic sources of the Formalesque
52
Occult and primitive sources of the Formalesque
67
The creation of the Formalesque
94
THE FORMALESQUE AND TWENTIETHCENTURY MODERNISM
107
Politics and the Formalesque
197
The late Formalesque
233
The Eurusan visual culture
255
The turn to meaning
272
Cultural imperialism and the Formalesque
305
Conclusion
343
References cited
346
Index
365

The origins of twentiethcentury modernism
109
Institutionalising the Formalesque
147

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O avtorju (1998)

Bernard Smith is president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is the author of European Vision and the South Pacific and Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages and coeditor of the three-volume set The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages, all published by Yale University Press.


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