World Famous Comics: Modernism: The Lure of Heresy
Modernism: The Lure of Heresy
By: Peter Gay Publisher: W. W. Norton Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: W. W. Norton Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 640 Publication Date: November 12, 2007
Peter Gay's most ambitious endeavor since Freud explores the shocking modernist rebellion that, beginning in the 1840s, transformed art, literature, music, and film with its assault on traditional forms. Beginning his epic study with Baudelaire, whose lurid poetry scandalized French stalwarts, Gay traces the revolutionary path of modernism from its Parisian origins to its emergence as the dominant cultural movement in world capitals such as Berlin and New York. A work unique in its breadth and brilliance, Modernism presents a thrilling pageant of heretics that includes (among others) Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, and D. W. Griffiths; James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot; Walter Gropius, Arnold Schoenberg, and (of course!) Andy Warhol. Finally, Gay examines the hostility of totalitarian regimes to modernist freedom and the role of Pop Art in sounding the death knell of a movement that dominated Western culture for 120 years. Lavishly illustrated, Modernism is a superlative achievement by one of our greatest historians. 92 illustrations, 16 pages of color.
A Sweeping Survey Peter Gay has written a sweeping survey of Modernism that is lucid, highly readable, amply illustrated, beautifully designed, and remarkably complete. He has, essentially, written a survey of 120 years of cultural and aesthetic history. This is not a task for the faint of heart, but Gay has never suffered from that malady, his array of works spanning multiple centuries. His two-volume history of the Enlightenment remains a very important study and his work on Freud and on 19thc sensibility equally so.
The problem with Modernism is that there is so much of it, particularly if you set out to write about poetry and fiction, music, architecture, painting, pop culture, and the many movements and sub-movements attending them. And of course, he is not bounded by any national borders. This is history with a capital H. That means that he has relatively little space (4-6 pp., usually at the outside) for each major figure. Thus, the book is a sweeping survey, an excellent introduction to the subject. Theory is kept to a minimum. He focuses on two aspects of Modernism--its penchant for aesthetic heresy and its stress of subjectivism.
The book is also scrupulously fair, recognizing silliness and extremism where they are found and recognizing the important realities that work designed to shock the middle class cannot exist without a middle class prepared to consume it and a society sufficiently free and stable to protect the shockers and provide them a safe place in which to work.
Personally, I would like to have seen a little more discussion of individuals who distinguished themselves but who did not subscribe to the Modernist agenda, writers such as Graham Greene or George Orwell and any number of individuals who produced magnificent work within the constraints of traditional forms. This is a book about Modernism, of course, but that could be contextualized with sharper contrasts. Gay is a believer, though a balanced one. Still, he sees grandeur in the international style of architecture and tends to overlook the ugliness of fifties' boxes with smudged glass and drip stains from flat roofs. I did not expect him to take Tom Wolfe's stance on the Bauhaus or on abstract expressionism, but Wolfe's (much-maligned) stance is shared by many. The book concludes with a survey of contemporary Modernism, with Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim and Marquez's fiction. Gay sees the world of fiction as relatively flat, though there are many skilled practitioners. It is only flat, in my opinion, if you confine yourself to Modernist writing. Pynchon, e.g., does not fit his template and is thus not considered, though he is a towering figure. This is a small quibble in light of the book's accomplishments, however. I highly recommend it as an introduction to the subject and as an instructive, entertaining, well-written book.
Modernism Lite I recently took a course on Joyce's Ulysses and I've been studying Eliot's "The Waste Land" both of which were published in 1922 and serve as defining modernist texts. I looked forward to reading Peter Gay's "Modernism" for insights into the movement's complex nest of heretical ideas, conflicted cultural displays and artistic expressions.
I feel let down. He focuses on the usual suspects; Joyce, Picasso, Balanchine, Stravinsky etc. and tells their stories with verve and enthusiasm. He dates the beginning of modernism from Baudelaire's publication of Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857. These poems offered up the twin defining characteristics Gay assigns to the movement; the breaking of conventions that elicit passionate revulsion and a subjective, psychological, inward focus by the artist. The book then follows painting, drama, music and architecture in a chronological progression through the male canon (except for Virginia Woolf) praising their distinctive takes on modernism as he has defined it.
He pulls the curtain down on the movement in 1960 with the advent of Pop Art. He ends the book with a rather perplexing claim that modernism is the great undead of movements, finding the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the architecture of Frank Gehry worthy of inclusion despite their work post-dating the movement's death knell by more than a generation. He does this by violating his own rule which is, "the lure of heresy." He doesn't claim that either Marques or Gehry were treated as heretics. They were grandly praised and understood immediately upon the appearance of their work. Isn't modernism dead when there is no shock?
This paean to the Marquez and Gehry points to a key weakness of the book in terms of providing an intellectual framework for the movement. It feels like he is far more interested in doling out the label of modernism to favorite artists than in grappling with the deep and ongoing issues that modernism evokes.
I don't claim any expertise on this subject but I think that to ignore western culture, to not even mention the Greek, Jewish, Christian traditions that modernism was reacting against and which Joyce and Eliot, in particular, engaged even as they exploded, is to miss the challenge modernism poses to our lives still. For example, Gay never mentions post-modernism as a movement and how it contrast and endangers or extends modernism. Perhaps it is a dead end, a stale rehash but can it be ignored altogether?
To me, these questions matter, modernism matters because it suggests a crisis in how we celebrate and express our collective identity. If modernism is dead or if it's merely a tradition of breaking rules and looking inward where are we now? How will we nourish our souls, define and share in a common sense of beauty and truth? However useful Gay's book will be for college freshman, it doesn't address the larger question of how a civilization picks up the pieces of all its broken icons.
Modernism: who would have thought I have not yet finished this book, but its content matter has inspired me to write a review anyway. Peter Gay has simply done a phenomenal job here. Of course he is famous for his biography of Freud, among other things. I consider myself a traditionalist, in belief if not in practice, and thus was a little hesitant to buy this book. But about ten pages in I realized I had made a good purchase. I began reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray" at just about the same time I did Gay's work and must say I think I have a greater understanding of what Wilde was doing in his work, thanks to Gay.
I've never understood Modernism really, always just sort of shyed away from it because I did not understand it:ignorant really. And though I will not say I have a new appreciation of Modern Art, I still loathe it mostly, I can at least understand the roots of it, (keep in mind I have not finished this work yet.) Peter Gay's work is very easy to follow, one may say fairly, I think, that it was written for the layman. What is better, it is enjoyable, and the combination of these two aspects makes it a welcome edition to any library...
Modernism: the big picture Now that Modernism is seen as a historical moment in the arts, it is useful to look at its full artistic context. This is also a big undertaking. The author seeks to capture the nature of Modernism in visual arts, dance, literature and so on. This is bound to be an uneven treatment. Who can be equally conversant with such a broad array of disciplines? The reader faces an equal problem. To fully understand the analysis of Modernism in the work of a particular writer or artist one must be already quite familiar with this person's work. The real specialist, however, may find the analysis covers familiar (and not necessarily new)territory. Having said this, I still feel that this is a worthwhile book for anyone trying to rethink the significance of the Modernist movement and its relevance today. Some will take issue with the choice of a particular composer or architect, but this can be the springboard for interesting discussion.
Perfect Intro The history of Modernism will never be written; we know too much about it (apologies to L.S.). Yet time and again some intrepid soul takes up the challenge and plunges ahead.
I am happy to report that Peter Gay, while by no means having written that elusive definitive opus, acquits himself splendidly and has produced a compulsively readable introduction to this vast topic. Discussing both the usual suspects in concise chapters (Baudelaire, Picasso, Cezanne, Duchamp, Joyce, Schoenberg, etc) and some less so (Ensor, dealer Durand-Ruel, museum curator Lichtwark), Gay weaves multiple stories together to make a seamless whole that carries the reader across Modernism's multiple manifestations: dance, sculpture, architecture, music, film as well as painting and literature.
Apt illustrations punctuate the text and the book's production as a whole is lovely. I would only criticize the dearth of illustrations when discussing paintings: verbal description can't do the visual arts justice. And like much of Gay's previous writing, Saint Sigmund hovers over the entire enterprise, thankfully never becoming too intrusive.
Having written definitive explorations of European culture in the 18th and 19th Centuries, it is a pleasure that Gay has brought readers into the 20th with this new volume, certain to be one of the most accessible introductions to Modernism for some time to come.
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