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The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935 (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Books) | 
 enlarge | Author: Wanda Corn
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $21.68
You Save: $18.27 (46%)
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 458186
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 470
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.7
Dimensions (in): 10.7 x 8.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0520231996
Dewey Decimal Number: 709
EAN: 9780520231993
ASIN: 0520231996
Publication Date: October 3, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Wanda M. Corn's long-awaited new book proposes a remarkable revisioning of the history of American modern art between the two world wars. Moving away from issues of style and abstraction, she bases her work on a broad examination of culture and on discourses of national identity. Corn argues that the key questions for interwar modernists in New York and Paris were whether or not it was possible to create an art that was both American and modern, and if it was, what such an art would look like. Both European and American artists debated these questions and made art that responded to them. PCorn organizes each chapter around a careful reading of a work of art, probing first its peculiar poetry and style and then its connection to its artist and the cultural influences surrounding it. The result is an unfolding of the work's contingent relationships with history, literature, art criticism, music, and popular culture. The works she examinesNfrom those made by the Stieglitz circle to those by European DadaistsNwere part of the quest for "the Great American Thing," a quest that was international in scope and that inspired a decade of vibrant cultural exchange between the art capitals of Europe and New York. Passionate and eminently readable, with more than 300 illustrationsNdrawings, paintings, sculptures, advertisements, cartoons, and documentary photographsNThe Great American Thing indelibly alters the way we think about the first decades of American modernism and the legacy it created.
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| Customer Reviews:
enlightening but a little incomplete July 1, 2001
Herbert (Woodhaven, NY USA)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Wanda Corn's book is the most extensive atttempt to put early modern art in the United States into its social, historical, and cultural context. In doing this, it has little competition. Most books in this field have been monographic studies of style--in other words mostly formalist analyses purely and totally. It is fortunate that Corn makes the central thesis of her book quite clear in the introduction and first chapter. She believes that there are connections between style and culture and she is determined to connect the visual with the social-historical meanings it often conveys.pCorn has done an enormous amount of research for this book and she provides many new insights. She connects the art to the time and place of creation with insight, enthusiasm and a lot of evidence to back up her opinions and observations. She even identifies, describes and traces the cultural roots of a distinctly American aesthetic in early modern painting that she labels billboard cubism. The book is structured with a long introduction, six chapters in which a single work by one artist is the focus (although many other works are discussed along the way) and an epilogue to trace how the issues at hand evolved after the period of time covered in this book.pThe book has some problems. The basic structure of the book as a series of case studies is somewhat off-putting. It is not clear how relevant the author's arguments focused on six works by six very different artists are to the breadth of art produced at this time. Her decision to make Gerald Murphy and not Stuart Davis the focus of one chapter is perplexing. Davis is much better known, he was more prolific, and there is more literature (although still not enough to answer some enduring questions) on him. The first chapter, on Duchamp's Fountain, tends to become somewhat unfocused as the author casts her perspective on the work's context a little too wide.pAll in all, an attractive book with lovely reproductions that is highly informative. Recommended strongly for students of American art and history.
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