Title
Modernism : the lure of heresy : from Baudelaire to Beckett and beyond / Peter Gay.
Edition
1st ed.
ISBN
9780393052053 (alk. paper)
0393052052 (alk. paper)
Publication Details
New York : W.W. Norton, c2008.
Language
English
Description
xxii, 610 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 25 cm.
Call Number
NX454.5.M63 G39 2008
Dewey Decimal Classification
700.9/034
Summary
Historian Gay explores the modernist rebellion that, beginning in the 1840s, transformed art, literature, music, and film with its assault on traditional forms. Beginning his epic study with Baudelaire, whose lurid poetry scandalized French stalwarts, Gay traces the revolutionary path of modernism from its Parisian origins to its emergence as the dominant cultural movement in world capitals such as Berlin and New York. This book presents a pageant of heretics that includes (among others) Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, and D. W. Griffith; James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot; Walter Gropius, Arnold Schoenberg, and (of course!) Andy Warhol. Finally, Gay examines the hostility of totalitarian regimes to modernist freedom and the role of Pop Art in sounding the death knell of a movement that dominated Western culture for 120 years.--From publisher description.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [511]-563) and index.
A climate for modernism
Professional outsiders
Irreconcilables and impresarios
Painting and sculpture : the madness of the unexpected
Prose and poetry : intermittences of the heart
Music and dance : the liberation of sound
Architecture and design : machinery, a new factor in human affairs
Drama and movies : the human element
Eccentrics and barbarians
Life after death?
Coda : And Gehry at Bilbao.
