Modernism's History: A Study in Twentieth-Century Art and Ideas

If you are interested in how art movements become popular and how style changes, Modernism's History is for you. It takes a series of art movements and reorganizes them as a cohesive whole. Author Bernard Smith offers very specific and often academic explanations for the rise of an art that he terms the "Formalesque": "The emergence of the Formalesque as a period style is basically the story of the reduction of the concept of style to that of form under the overarching conditions of cultural imperialism ... the desire to create a universal art with an authentic European look." He traces the Formalesque's beginnings from the very end of the 19th century up through what he calls high Formalesque in the 1960s. Smith touches on the Formalesque's relationships to World War I, primitivism, dada, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and philosophy--among other varied topics. His approach is a holistic, albeit slightly conspiracy-theory-based, one; politics, language, and the avant-garde all play a part in this reinterpretation of modernism. Tight arguments strongly support what might otherwise be called sweeping generalizations in Smith's attempts to illustrate how the Formalesque changed definitions of beauty by universalizing the terms and then became "an effective imperialising project" around the globe. This is not an easy read, but it's well worth the effort for readers who want to learn more about contemporary art history. --Jennifer Cohen