Making the Americas modern : hemispheric art, 1910-1960 / Edward J. Sullivan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sullivan, Edward J., author.

Series:

Global perspectives series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Modernism (Art)--America--20th century.

Modernism (Art).

America.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

336 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

London : Laurence King Publishing, 2018.

Summary:

This book presents an audacious account of the ways in which the arts in the Americas were modernized during the first half of the twentieth century. Rather than viewing modernization as a steady progression from one ?ism? to another, Edward J. Sullivan adopts a comparative approach, drawing his examples from North America, the Caribbean, Central and South America. By considering the Americas in this hemispheric sense he is able to tease out many stories of art and focus on the ways in which artists from different regions not only adapted and experimented with visual expression, but also absorbed trans-national as well as international influences. He shows how this rich diversity is most evident in the various forms of abstract art that emerged throughout the Americas and which in turn had an impact on art throughout the world.

Contents:

Prologue: Fragmentary histories of hemispheric art, 1910-1960 : Exhibiting modern art, 1910-1960

Time frames

Divisions of the story

End of the story. 1 The expanding mind: symbolist imagery in the Americas : American decadence and redemption, c.1910-1930

North American visionaries

Cannibals in the southern cone: Alejandro Xul Solar and Tarsila do Amaral. 2 A sense of place: landscapes, cityscapes, and topographies of the self : The year 1916

Landscapes of the mind

Southwest reveries

Canadian wilderness

Mexican volcanoes

Cityscapes

South of the U.S. border. 3 Visualizing blackness in the Americas : Blackness in the modernist imagination

Blackness, dance, music, and ritual

black faces, black bodies

Labor and struggle

Black abstractions. 4 Cross-border dialogues : Revolutionary art: between exaltation and despair

Public arts on both sides of the border

Muralism, teaching, and learning. 5 Labor, anxiety, and a new social order : Anxiety

Lynchings

Clouds of war

Eye witness

Labor and exile

Exile and migration. 6 The liberated line: toward abstracted form : Alternative histories

Abstracted nature

Surrealism into abstraction

Site-specific abstraction. 7 The cube, sphere, and cone; constructed abstractions in the Americas : American responses to geometric form, c.1910-1920

Joaquin Torres-García, the Torres-García workshop, and arithmetical proportion

Geometric Manhattan

Río de la Plata: beyond Torres - experimentation in the 1940s

Brazil builds

Havana - Paris - New York - Montreal. 8 Modern visionaries and the intuitive imagination : Trans-American surrealism

The 1940s and 50s in Latin America: surrealist affinities

From Mexico to Manhattan and beyond

Dance, visual art, and visionary modernity

Popular arts, the intuitive eye, and modernity. Epilogue: Into the future : Pop art and revolution

Art for all

Environments and total participation

Art and terror.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781786271556

1786271559

OCLC:

993420136