|
Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > From 1900
|
Buy Now
The Avant-Garde in Interwar England - Medieval Modernism and the London Underground (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R3,174
Discovery Miles 31 740
|
|
|
The Avant-Garde in Interwar England - Medieval Modernism and the London Underground (Hardcover)
Expected to ship within 12 - 19 working days
|
The Avant-Garde in Interwar England addresses modernism's ties to
tradition, commerce, nationalism, and spirituality through an
analysis of the assimilation of visual modernism in England between
1910 and 1939. During this period, a debate raged across the nation
concerning the purpose of art in society. On one side were the
aesthetic formalists, led by members of London's Bloomsbury Group,
who thought art was autonomous from everyday life. On the other
were England's so-called medieval modernists, many of them from the
provincial North, who maintained that art had direct social
functions and moral consequences. As Michael T. Saler demonstrates
in this fascinating volume, the heated exchange between these two
camps would ultimately set the terms for how modern art was
perceived by the British public.
Histories of English modernism have usually emphasized the seminal
role played by the Bloomsbury Group in introducing, celebrating,
and defining modernism, but Saler's study instead argues that,
during the watershed years between the World Wars, modern art was
most often understood in the terms laid out by the medieval
modernists. As the name implies, these artists and intellectuals
closely associated modernism with the art of the Middle Ages,
building on the ideas of John Ruskin, William Morris, and other
nineteenth-century romantic medievalists. In their view, modernism
was a spiritual, national, and economic movement, a new and
different artistic sensibility that was destined to revitalize
England's culture as well as its commercial exports when applied to
advertising and industrial design.
This book, then, concerns the busy intersection of art, trade, and
national identity in the early decades of twentieth-century
England. Specifically, it explores the life and work of Frank Pick,
managing director of the London Underground, whose famous patronage
of modern artists, architects, and designers was guided by a desire
to unite nineteenth-century arts and crafts with twentieth-century
industry and mass culture. As one of the foremost adherents of
medieval modernism, Pick converted London's primary public
transportation system into the culminating project of the arts and
crafts movement. But how should today's readers regard Pick's
achievement? What can we say of the legacy of this visionary patron
who sought to transform the whole of sprawling London into a
post-impressionist work of art? And was medieval modernism itself a
movement of pioneers or dreamers? In its bold engagement with such
questions, The Avant-Garde in Interwar England will surely appeal
to students of modernism, twentieth-century art, the cultural
history of England, and urban history.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
You might also like..
Sandra Blow
Michael Bird
Paperback
R794
Discovery Miles 7 940
Nobody
Alice Oswald
Hardcover
R720
Discovery Miles 7 200
See more
|
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
