Embattled Avant-Gardes: Modernism's Resistance to Commodity Culture in Europe
Walter L Adamson
(Author)
Description
This sweeping work, at once a panoramic overview and an ambitious critical reinterpretation of European modernism, provides a bold new perspective on a movement that defined the cultural landscape of the early twentieth century. Walter L. Adamson embarks on a lucid, wide-ranging exploration of the avant-garde practices through which the modernist generations after 1900 resisted the rise of commodity culture as a threat to authentic cultural expression. Taking biographical approaches to numerous avant-garde leaders, Adamson charts the rise and fall of modernist aspirations in movements and individuals as diverse as Ruskin, Marinetti, Kandinsky, Bauhaus, Purism, and the art critic Herbert Read. In conclusion, Adamson rises to the defense of the modernists, suggesting that their ideas are relevant to current efforts to think through what it might mean to create a vibrant, aesthetically satisfying form of cultural democracy.Product Details
Price
$41.94
Publisher
University of California Press
Publish Date
August 01, 2009
Pages
448
Dimensions
5.6 X 1.1 X 8.6 inches | 1.2 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780520261532
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
About the Author
Walter L. Adamson is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History at Emory University where he teaches modern European intellectual and cultural history as well as modern Italian history. He is author of Avant-Garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism. winner of the Howard Marraro Prize of the American Historical Association, and Hegemony and Revolution (UC Press), winner of the Howard Marraro Prize of the Society for Italian Historical Studies.