ΤΟ ΕΠΑΝΑΣΤΑΤΙΚΟ ΚΙΝΗΜΑ ΤΟΥ ΜΟΝΤΕΡΝΙΣΜΟΥ

ΑΠΟ ΚΡΑΥΓΗ ΣΕ ΨΙΘΥΡΟ. Μια ιστόρηση του επαναστατικού κινήματος του μοντερνισμού, από τον Πίτερ Γκέι. [International Herald Triibune, Η Καθημερινή, 18/1/2008]. Οι ιστορικοί λένε ότι ο μοντερνισμός γεννήθηκε τον 19ο αιώνα και πέθανε τον 20ό, έχοντας ζήσει μια καλή ζωή. Ήταν ένα άξιο καλλιτεχνικό κίνημα που ξεκίνησε στη δεκαετία του 1890 με την ποίηση του Σαρλ Μποντλέρ και τέλειωσε τον δρόμο του στα κουτιά Brillo του Αντι Γουόρχολ.

Σαν τον στίχο του Τ. Σ. Έλιοτ, κορυφαίου μοντερνιστή, άρχισε με έναν κρότο και τέλειωσε με έναν ψίθυρο. Απέναντι στα χρηστά ήθη: Έτσι αντιλαμβάνεται τα πράγματα ο ιστορικός Peter Gay στο νέο βιβλίο του Modernism: The lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond που κυκλοφόρησε πρόσφατα (εκδ. W. Νorton, 610 σελ. 35 δολάρια). Πρόκειται, όπως γράφει ο Ουίλιαμ Γκράιμς στην «Ιντερνάσιοναλ Χέραλντ Τρίμπιουν», για μια σαρωτική μελέτη των ποιητών, θεατρικών συγγραφέων, ζωγράφων και αρχιτεκτόνων που ξανάγραψαν τους νόμους της τέχνης, μεταμόρφωσαν τη συνείδηση και όταν και όπου μπορούσαν προσέβαλαν (με τις δύο σημασίες της λέξης) τα χρηστά ήθη της μεσοαστικής τάξης.

Βέβαια, καθώς τονίζει ο ιστορικός, τα χρηστά τούτα ήθη είναι κάτι συζητήσιμο και πιθανώς υπερβολικά εκτιμημένο. Όλες οι επαναστάσεις θέλουν και έχουν έναν εχθρό. Οι μοντερνιστές βρήκαν ή δημιούργησαν τον εχθρό τους στην μπουρζουαζία… [περισσότερα εδώ]

National Book Award-winning historian Peter Gay traces the rise of Modernism, the cultural movement that shaped the Western world.

In Peter Gay's long-awaited work, his most ambitious undertaking since his seminal biography of Freud, the eminent scholar tells how Modernism swept through the arts beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, destroying traditional and classical artistic forms, and creating the modern world as we know it. Opening this epic book with Charles Baudelaire, Gay shows how the French poet's sexually explicit, and often perverse, poetry scandalized Paris in the 1840s and 1850s. In a sprawling work that examines the great Modernist influences in literature, poetry, music, and architecture, among other art forms, Gay presents a thrilling pageant of historical characters and legendary heretics, including Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, and even Andy Warhol. In a final chapter devoted to Pop Art, Gay reveals how a new generation of artists ingeniously brought together high and low art, thus sounding the death knell of a movement that had dominated Western culture for over 120 years. 40 illustrations.

Review: "Putting a Freudian view of life as an arena of conflict at the center of a view of modernism, this outspoken study tracks the avant-garde across a wide array of high culture — literature, music and dance, painting and sculpture, architecture and film. Conventional Victorians, according to Gay, found the belief in art for art's sake of libertine and aesthete Oscar Wilde as much a perversion as his homosexuality. But even fans often get it wrong, says Gay, embracing Edvard Munch's most famous painting, The Scream, as the quintessential symbol of modern angst, while Munch meant his nightmarish vision as a confession of his own inner state. And thanks to generous patrons, the oeuvre of anti-artist Marcel Duchamp, an enemy of museums, is featured prominently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Modernism isn't a single style, Gay shows: in literature, Ulysses's wordy, sensual world stands in direct opposition to Virginia Woolf's in Mrs. Dalloway, spare and cool. This latest from Gay (National Book Award winner for The Enlightenment) isn't a monumental or definitive treatise but a highly personal, arbitrary and invigorating collection of mini-essays that view a variety of artistic works from a fresh perspective. 16 pages of color, and b&w illus.. (Nov.) " Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis: Gays ambitious endeavor looks at the modernist rebellion that, beginning in the 1840s, transformed art, literature, music, and film. Beginning his epic study with Baudelaire, Gay traces the revolutionary path from its Parisian origins to its emergence as the dominant cultural movement. Illustrated.

Synopsis: 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.

The Blush of the New

Photographs, clockwise from left: Keystone/Corbis; Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis; Stapleton Collection/Corbis. Clockwise from above: Le Corbusier brought a modernist sensibility to architecture, Flaubert to the novel and Baudelaire to poetry.

MODERNISM. The Lure of Heresy From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond. By Peter Gay. Illustrated. 610 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $35.

Thomas Mann was an archmodernist, and this was his favorite story: One day, Gustave Flaubert was out walking with his sister. Ferociously antibourgeois, Flaubert lived alone, unconsoled and unencumbered by marriage or family. His novels mocked and maligned the French middle class, ironizing it into oblivion. He was a great frequenter of brothels and had fornicated his way through Paris and Cairo. And yet here he was out for a stroll, suddenly stopping in his tracks before a small house surrounded by a white picket fence. In the yard, a solid middle-class father played with his typical middle-class children while wife and mother looked lovingly on. The enemy! Yet instead of holding his nose, Flaubert gestured toward the house and exclaimed, without irony: “Ils sont dans le vrai!” (“They are in the truth!”) For Mann, the delightful incident illustrated the tension between the outrage at conventional life and the yearning to be part of it that tore at modernist psyches. There is more to aesthetic rebellion than offends the eye... [The New York Times, Sunday Book Review]