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
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Page 8
... formulas . Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations . Kitsch changes according to style , but remains always the same . Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times . Kitsch pretends to demand ...
... formulas . Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations . Kitsch changes according to style , but remains always the same . Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times . Kitsch pretends to demand ...
Page 9
... formulas at every level of production from verbal to structural and thus was formulaic without being mechanical. Formulas belong to crafts; mechanical reproduction be- longs to industry. They are very different things, and the ten ...
... formulas at every level of production from verbal to structural and thus was formulaic without being mechanical. Formulas belong to crafts; mechanical reproduction be- longs to industry. They are very different things, and the ten ...
Page 10
... formulas have a place in almost all art , and sometimes an important place , as E. H. Gombrich demonstrated so powerfully in Art and Illusion . Much of the pleasure we derive from works of art has to do with our recog- nition of ...
... formulas have a place in almost all art , and sometimes an important place , as E. H. Gombrich demonstrated so powerfully in Art and Illusion . Much of the pleasure we derive from works of art has to do with our recog- nition of ...
Page 27
... . ( 1 : 6-7 , emphasis added ) It is painfully clear how powerfully the social and economic are commingled with the aesthetic and moral in this formula- tion . Human nature reaches its peak among the opulent High and Low 27.
... . ( 1 : 6-7 , emphasis added ) It is painfully clear how powerfully the social and economic are commingled with the aesthetic and moral in this formula- tion . Human nature reaches its peak among the opulent High and Low 27.
Page 53
... Formula . ( 14.9 : 272 ) Ginner claimed the Impressionists for Realism and argued that the Neo - Realists were their proper heirs , rather than the Post - Impressionists , who had merely made an academic for- mula out of what was alive ...
... Formula . ( 14.9 : 272 ) Ginner claimed the Impressionists for Realism and argued that the Neo - Realists were their proper heirs , rather than the Post - Impressionists , who had merely made an academic for- mula out of what was alive ...
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 |
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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