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 44
Page x
... tion of Modernism as clear and powerful as MoMA's “ art that is essentially abstract . " Even so , critics and scholars kept at- tempting to define literary Modernism in terms of verbal ex- perimentation or some form of departure from ...
... tion of Modernism as clear and powerful as MoMA's “ art that is essentially abstract . " Even so , critics and scholars kept at- tempting to define literary Modernism in terms of verbal ex- perimentation or some form of departure from ...
Page xiii
... tion and seeing freshly in visual art , and the defamiliarizing effects of poetic language . I also mean wit and grace , whether verbal or visual . The one thing that distinguishes the arts from other kinds of texts is that their aim is ...
... tion and seeing freshly in visual art , and the defamiliarizing effects of poetic language . I also mean wit and grace , whether verbal or visual . The one thing that distinguishes the arts from other kinds of texts is that their aim is ...
Page 3
... , and how they slide easily into absolute notions of Good and Bad . I shall also try to situate that discourse in rela- tion to some earlier versions of the High / Low distinction , and. ONE: High and Low in Modernist Criticism.
... , and how they slide easily into absolute notions of Good and Bad . I shall also try to situate that discourse in rela- tion to some earlier versions of the High / Low distinction , and. ONE: High and Low in Modernist Criticism.
Page 8
... tion of The New Yorker as " fundamentally high - class kitsch for the luxury trade ” ( 11 ) . Genuine art , for Greenberg , is “ neces- sarily difficult " and requires work from the cultivated con- sumer ( 15 ) , while kitsch offers the ...
... tion of The New Yorker as " fundamentally high - class kitsch for the luxury trade ” ( 11 ) . Genuine art , for Greenberg , is “ neces- sarily difficult " and requires work from the cultivated con- sumer ( 15 ) , while kitsch offers the ...
Page 15
... tion as an autonomous sphere of activity patronized by Renais- sance bankers , but it preserves its critical autonomy even while being patronized : “ What is new is not that it is a commodity , but that today it deliberately admits that ...
... tion as an autonomous sphere of activity patronized by Renais- sance bankers , but it preserves its critical autonomy even while being patronized : “ What is new is not that it is a commodity , but that today it deliberately admits that ...
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