Modernism

Robin Walz is Associate Professor of History at the University of Alaska Southeast. He has published books and articles on Modernism and aspects of popular culture in the twentieth century.

PART ONE ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT. 1. THE PROBLEM. What is Modernism? 2. THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF MODERNISM. Art and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. The Perceptual Revolution. 3. HIGH MODERNISM. The Early Avant-Garde. The Radical Avant-Garde. The New Sobriety. 4. AFTER MODERNISM. The Neo-Avant-Garde. Postmodernism. PART TWO DOCUMENTS. 1. Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’. 2. Virginia Woolf, ‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown’. 3. Henri Matisse, ‘Notes of a Painter’. 4. Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. 5. Piet Mondrian, “Neo-Plasticism: The General Principle of Plastic Equivalence”. 6. Emil Nolde, ‘On Primitive Art’. 7. F. T. Marinetti, ‘The Founding and the Manifesto of Futurism’. 8. Tristan Tzara, ‘Dada Manifesto 1918’. 9. André Breton, “The Manifesto of Surrealism. 10. Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant, ‘Purism’. 11. Walter Gropius, ‘The Theory and Organisation of the Bauhaus’. 12. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Cubism and Abstract Art. 13. Clement Greenberg, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’. 14. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. 15. Richard Hamilton, ‘For the Finest Art try – POP’. 16. Peter Bürger, ‘The Negation of the Autonomy of Art by the Avant-Garde’. 17. Jean Baudrillard, Simulations. 18. Frederic Jameson, ‘Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’. 19. Lucy R. Lippard, ‘Trojan Horses: Activist Art and Power”. 20. Raymond Williams, ‘When Was Modernism?’ FURTHER READINGS. REFERENCES. INDEX.