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This title in other editionsModernism: The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyondby Peter Gay
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:National Book Award-winning historian Peter Gay traces the rise of Modernism, the cultural movement that shaped the Western world. In Peter Gay's long-awaited work, his most ambitious undertaking since his seminal biography of Freud, the eminent scholar tells how Modernism swept through the arts beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, destroying traditional and classical artistic forms, and creating the modern world as we know it. Opening this epic book with Charles Baudelaire, Gay shows how the French poet's sexually explicit, and often perverse, poetry scandalized Paris in the 1840s and 1850s. In a sprawling work that examines the great Modernist influences in literature, poetry, music, and architecture, among other art forms, Gay presents a thrilling pageant of historical characters and legendary heretics, including Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, and even Andy Warhol. In a final chapter devoted to Pop Art, Gay reveals how a new generation of artists ingeniously brought together high and low art, thus sounding the death knell of a movement that had dominated Western culture for over 120 years. 40 illustrations. Review:"Putting a Freudian view of life as an arena of conflict at the center of a view of modernism, this outspoken study tracks the avant-garde across a wide array of high culture — literature, music and dance, painting and sculpture, architecture and film. Conventional Victorians, according to Gay, found the belief in art for art's sake of libertine and aesthete Oscar Wilde as much a perversion as his homosexuality. But even fans often get it wrong, says Gay, embracing Edvard Munch's most famous painting, The Scream, as the quintessential symbol of modern angst, while Munch meant his nightmarish vision as a confession of his own inner state. And thanks to generous patrons, the oeuvre of anti-artist Marcel Duchamp, an enemy of museums, is featured prominently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Modernism isn't a single style, Gay shows: in literature, Ulysses's wordy, sensual world stands in direct opposition to Virginia Woolf's in Mrs. Dalloway, spare and cool. This latest from Gay (National Book Award winner for The Enlightenment) isn't a monumental or definitive treatise but a highly personal, arbitrary and invigorating collection of mini-essays that view a variety of artistic works from a fresh perspective. 16 pages of color, and b&w illus.. (Nov.) " Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Book News Annotation:This is not a history of the rise, triumph, and decline of modernism,
insists Gay (emeritus, Yale U.), though he is a laureled veteran
American historian; though--while taking such liberties as old men
can and must--he moves in a chronological direction both across and
within chapters; though he strays at times from the formal analysis
of novels and sculptures and buildings to place the works of their
modernist creators within a framework of references historians have
constructed. It is not a psychoanalysis of modernism either, he says
but closer to one than to a history.
Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Synopsis:'Rich, learned, briskly written, maddening yet necessary study."Lee Siegel, New York Times Book Review Synopsis:A celebration of subversives: the first one-volume history of the greatest cultural movement since the Enlightenment. Synopsis:Peter Gay explores the shocking modernist rebellion that, beginning in the 1840s, transformed art, literature, music, and film. Modernism presents a thrilling pageant of heretics that includes Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, D. W. Griffiths, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Walter Gropius, Arnold Schoenberg, and (of course!) Andy Warhol. Synopsis:Peter Gay's most ambitious endeavor since Freud explores the shocking 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. A work unique in its breadth and brilliance, Modernism presents a thrilling pageant of heretics that includes (among others) Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, and D. W. Griffiths; 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. Lavishly illustrated, Modernism is a superlative achievement by one of our greatest historians. About the AuthorPeter Gay is the author of more than twenty-five books, including the National Book Award winner The Enlightenment, the best-selling Weimar Culture, and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time. He lives in New York City. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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