Paradoxy of ModernismIn this lively, personal book, Robert Scholes intervenes in ongoing discussions about modernism in the arts during the crucial half-century from 1895 to 1945. While critics of and apologists for modernism have defined modern art and literature in terms of binary oppositions—high/low, old/new, hard/soft, poetry/rhetoric—Scholes contends that these distinctions are in fact confused and misleading. Such oppositions are instances of “paradoxy”—an apparent clarity that covers real confusion. Closely examining specific literary texts, drawings, critical writings, and memoirs, Scholes seeks to complicate the neat polar oppositions attributed to modernism. He argues for the rehabilitation of works in the middle ground that have been trivialized in previous evaluations, and he fights orthodoxy with such paradoxes as “durable fluff,” “formulaic creativity,” and “iridescent mediocrity.” The book reconsiders major figures like James Joyce while underscoring the value of minor figures and addressing new attention to others rarely studied. It includes twenty-two illustrations of the artworks discussed. Filled with the observations of a personable and witty guide, this is a book that opens up for a reader’s delight the rich cultural terrain of modernism. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 93
Page viii
... PART III Doxies EIGHT Model Artists in Paris : Hastings , Hamnett , and Kiki 221 NINE The Aesthete in the Brothel : Proust and Others 257 Works Cited 281 Index 285 Preface I have a personal stake in this book , viii Contents Index.
... PART III Doxies EIGHT Model Artists in Paris : Hastings , Hamnett , and Kiki 221 NINE The Aesthete in the Brothel : Proust and Others 257 Works Cited 281 Index 285 Preface I have a personal stake in this book , viii Contents Index.
Page xii
... artists and critics as those voices argued about what should be the proper art for modern culture — and we will look at images of the works they were dis- cussing . The critical vocabulary of Modernism began with the visual arts , and ...
... artists and critics as those voices argued about what should be the proper art for modern culture — and we will look at images of the works they were dis- cussing . The critical vocabulary of Modernism began with the visual arts , and ...
Page xiii
... I call " Doxies " : lives and texts concerned with prostitution or the bohemia that exists on the border of the brothel , where artists and models exchange places and aesthetes get down and dirty . Some of these Preface xiii.
... I call " Doxies " : lives and texts concerned with prostitution or the bohemia that exists on the border of the brothel , where artists and models exchange places and aesthetes get down and dirty . Some of these Preface xiii.
Page 1
... artists and texts that have been marginalized if not excluded by the manifestos and critical dogmas of Modernism, though we shall return to High texts in Low places in the final chapter. 1 High and Low in Modernist Criticism I want to ...
... artists and texts that have been marginalized if not excluded by the manifestos and critical dogmas of Modernism, though we shall return to High texts in Low places in the final chapter. 1 High and Low in Modernist Criticism I want to ...
Page 7
... artists who kept the flame of culture alive — wooed away by a spurious commercial or academic substitute : “ that thing to which the Germans gave the wonder- ful name of Kitsch : popular , commercial art and literature with their ...
... artists who kept the flame of culture alive — wooed away by a spurious commercial or academic substitute : “ that thing to which the Germans gave the wonder- ful name of Kitsch : popular , commercial art and literature with their ...
Contents
1 | |
3 | |
33 | |
Poetry and Rhetoric in the Modernist Montage | 95 |
Hard and Soft Joyce and Others | 120 |
PART II Paradoxes | 141 |
Durable Fluff The Importance of Not Being Earnest | 143 |
Iridescent Mediocrity Dornford Yates and Others | 162 |
Formulaic CreativitySimenons Maigret Novels | 195 |
PART III Doxies | 219 |
Model Artists in ParisHastings Hamnett and Kiki | 221 |
The Aesthete in the Brothel Proust and Others | 257 |
Works Cited | 281 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abstract aesthetic Anthony Ludovici argue artists Beatrice Hastings beauty Berry brothel called chapter characters Clement Greenberg comedy course Cubist culture discussion Dornford Yates doxy drawing durable fluff Eisenstein Eliot emotion English Epstein ernism essay Ezra Pound fiction formula French Georges Simenon Greenberg Gwendolen Hastings Henri Gaudier-Brzeska High and Low Hulme Hulme's images irony issue Joyce Joyce's Kiki Kiki's kind kitsch Lady Bracknell literary literature London look Ludovici Lukács magazine Marcel mediocrity middlebrow Modernist Modernist critical modes Modigliani montage narrative narrator Neo-Realists never Nina Hamnett painter painting paradoxy of Modernism Paris passage perhaps Picasso play pleasure poem poet poetry Post-Impressionist Pound Proust readers realistic rhetoric scene seems sentiment serious Simenon social story T. E. Hulme T. S. Eliot texts things thought tion translation ture turn Ulysses visual art Walter Sickert Woolf word writers Wyndham Lewis