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Wanda Corn
The Great American Thing
Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935
An Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Book
$39.95, £23.95 paperback
978-0-520-23199-3
Available Now
470 pages, 8-1/2 x 11 inches, 185 b/w photographs, 140 color photographs
January 2000, Available worldwide
Categories: Art; Art History; American Studies
January 2000, Available worldwide
Categories: Art; Art History; American Studies
"A provocative study and an important addition to modernist scholarship."—Jennifer A. Greenhill, Boston Book Review
"Now comes this remarkable book, parading as a coffee-table art book whereas it really is a wondrously provoking jaunt through the works and movements that made America see itself-and the future-through paintings, cartoons, advertisements: everything visual."—Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun
"...brilliantly conceived and executed...One particularly admires Corn for the way in which she escorts us out of the museum, and connects American art with American life in the period of her study."—Arthur C. Danto, Times Literary Supplement
"Corn uncovers a rich and often contradictory mix of motives for each object she scrutinizes."—Wilson Quarterly
"[A] boldly argued study... In looking for the roots of the American obsession to create an artistic tradition of its own—what Georgia O'Keeffe called 'the great American thing'—Corn zeroes in on such 'machine-age modernists' of the 20s as Demuth and Charles Sheeler." –Christopher Benfey, New York Times Book Review
"The story of how Alfred Stieglitz's shifting band of merry ex-pats and homegrown experimenters invented American modernism has been oft and well told, but never with Corn's combination of lucidity, subtlety and clear-eyed sympathy with the work—and the jingoistic America from which it emerged."—Publishers Weekly
"A wide-ranging, accessible, and erudite discourse on both the international and homegrown origins of American modernism."—Russell T. Clement, Library Journal
"Never has the era, together with its diverse artistic movements, been understood so comprehensively and so insightfully... What emerges from this exhaustive analysis of early American modernism is an unsuspected coherence to a period heretofore thought of as diverse and culturally schizophrenic."—Choice
"This profusely illustrated work suggests new and sometimes surprising answers."—Art Newspaper
"Now comes this remarkable book, parading as a coffee-table art book whereas it really is a wondrously provoking jaunt through the works and movements that made America see itself-and the future-through paintings, cartoons, advertisements: everything visual."—Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun
"...brilliantly conceived and executed...One particularly admires Corn for the way in which she escorts us out of the museum, and connects American art with American life in the period of her study."—Arthur C. Danto, Times Literary Supplement
"Corn uncovers a rich and often contradictory mix of motives for each object she scrutinizes."—Wilson Quarterly
"[A] boldly argued study... In looking for the roots of the American obsession to create an artistic tradition of its own—what Georgia O'Keeffe called 'the great American thing'—Corn zeroes in on such 'machine-age modernists' of the 20s as Demuth and Charles Sheeler." –Christopher Benfey, New York Times Book Review
"The story of how Alfred Stieglitz's shifting band of merry ex-pats and homegrown experimenters invented American modernism has been oft and well told, but never with Corn's combination of lucidity, subtlety and clear-eyed sympathy with the work—and the jingoistic America from which it emerged."—Publishers Weekly
"A wide-ranging, accessible, and erudite discourse on both the international and homegrown origins of American modernism."—Russell T. Clement, Library Journal
"Never has the era, together with its diverse artistic movements, been understood so comprehensively and so insightfully... What emerges from this exhaustive analysis of early American modernism is an unsuspected coherence to a period heretofore thought of as diverse and culturally schizophrenic."—Choice
"This profusely illustrated work suggests new and sometimes surprising answers."—Art Newspaper
"Wanda Corn's work is a triumph, and will be a welcome and provocative addition to the literature of modernism. Each section is studded with keen insights to key players of the decade and the forces that shaped their attitudes and achievements."—Charles Eldredge, author of Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern
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.
Corn 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 examines—from those made by the Stieglitz circle to those by European Dadaists—were 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 illustrations—drawings, paintings, sculptures, advertisements, cartoons, and documentary photographs—The Great American Thing indelibly alters the way we think about the first decades of American modernism and the legacy it created.
Corn 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 examines—from those made by the Stieglitz circle to those by European Dadaists—were 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 illustrations—drawings, paintings, sculptures, advertisements, cartoons, and documentary photographs—The Great American Thing indelibly alters the way we think about the first decades of American modernism and the legacy it created.
ARTISTS AND WORKS FEATURED:
Paul Rosenfeld, Port of New York, 1924
Alfred Stieglitz, Spiritual America, New York, 1924
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917
Gerald Murphy, Razor, 1924
Joseph Stella, New York Interpreted, 1920-22
Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928
Georgia O'Keeffe, Cow's Skull—Red, White and Blue, 1931
Charles Sheeler, HOME SWEET HOME, 1931
Stuart Davis, The Paris Bit, 1959
Paul Rosenfeld, Port of New York, 1924
Alfred Stieglitz, Spiritual America, New York, 1924
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917
Gerald Murphy, Razor, 1924
Joseph Stella, New York Interpreted, 1920-22
Charles Demuth, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, 1928
Georgia O'Keeffe, Cow's Skull—Red, White and Blue, 1931
Charles Sheeler, HOME SWEET HOME, 1931
Stuart Davis, The Paris Bit, 1959
Winner, Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art
Democratic Visions, by Celeste Connor
Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy, edited by Deborah Rothschild
A Transatlantic Avant-Garde: American Artists in Paris, 1918-1939, edited by Sophie Lévy
Modernism and the Feminine Voice: O'Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle, by Kathleen Pyne
Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s, by Lewis Mumford
Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy, edited by Deborah Rothschild
A Transatlantic Avant-Garde: American Artists in Paris, 1918-1939, edited by Sophie Lévy
Modernism and the Feminine Voice: O'Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle, by Kathleen Pyne
Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s, by Lewis Mumford