Free as gods : how the Jazz Age reinvented modernism / Charles A. Riley II.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Riley, Charles A., II, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Arts, French--France--Paris--20th century.

Arts, French.

Artists--Professional relationships.

History.

Artists.

Avant-garde (Aesthetics).

France--Paris.

Avant-garde (Aesthetics)--France--Paris--History--20th century.

Artists--Professional relationships--France--Paris--History--20th century.

Paris (France)--Intellectual life--20th century.

Paris (France).

Intellectual life.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 271 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

regular print

Place of Publication:

[Hanover] : ForeEdge, An imprint of University Press of New England, [2017]

Summary:

Among many art, music and literature lovers, particularly devotees of modernism, the expatriate community in France during the Jazz Age represents a remarkable convergence of genius in one place and period -- one of the most glorious in history. Drawn by the presence of such avant-garde figures as Joyce and Picasso, artists and writers fled the Prohibition in the United States and revolution in Russia to head for the free-wheeling scene in Paris, where they made contact with rivals, collaborators, and a sophisticated audience of collectors and patrons. The outpouring of boundary-pushing novels, paintings, ballets, music, and design was so profuse that it belies the brevity of the era (1918-1929). Drawing on unpublished albums, drawings, paintings, and manuscripts, Charles A. Riley offers a fresh examination of both canonic and overlooked writers and artists and their works, by revealing them in conversation with one another. He illuminates social interconnections and artistic collaborations among the most famous --Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gershwin, Archibald Motley Jr., and Langston Hughes, and women such as Gertrude Stein and Nancy Cunard.

Contents:

Part 1: Freedom: Anything goes

Enter the ballets russes

One of those fabulous flights: Cole Porter

Stairway to paradise: George Gershwin

Inevitable Paris beckoned: John Dos Passos and e.e. cummings

Dancing on dynamite: Nancy Cunard

From flappers to philosophers: F. Scott Fitzgerald

New amazements: Hart Crane

Weary bluesman: Langston Hughes

Making it in the Paris art world

Part 2: Order: Blessed rage

Existential octaves: Ernest Ansermet

Geometry and gods, side by side: Le Corbusier

Connoisseur of contrasts: Fernand Léger

Transfigurations of the commonplace: Gerald Murphy

Prophet of disorder: Oswald Spengler

Part 3: Truth: The truest sentence

The truth in painting: Pablo PIcasso

Words in a strange language: Archibald MacLeish

The malady of language: Eugene Jolas

The real thing: Ernest Hemingway.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-258) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Riley, Charles A. Free as gods.

ISBN:

9781611688504

1611688507

OCLC:

962025732