Legends of the Modern

Didier Maleuvre is Professor of Comparative Literature and French Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He is the author of Museum Memories: History, Technology, Art (1999), The Religion of Reality: Inquiry into the Self, Art, and Transcendence (2006), The Horizon: A History of our Infinite Longing (2011), and The Art of Civilization: A Bourgeois History (2016).

• IntroductionPart I: What Made Art Modern1. Hamlet, or Art against Itself2. Michelangelo, or the Labors of Freedom3. Don Quixote, or the Weakness of FictionPart II: What Makes Modern Art4. The Inward Turn5. The Legend of Freedom6. The Legend of the Artist7. The Legend of the New8. The Legend of Creativity9. The Legend of Artistic Block10. The Legend of Transcendence11. The Legend of Subversion12. The Legend of the End of ArtCodaNotesBibliographyIndex

Ambitious, persuasive, illuminating, and sometimes bracingly provocative in its efforts to demystify the ‘legends’ of modern art. Didier Maleuvre makes striking observations and arguments particularly in relation to the nature of ‘unfinished’ art and the ‘aristocracy’ of artists such as Marcel Duchamp, which diverge compellingly from established understandings about such matters—and which I imagine students would find particularly beneficial as they grapple with some of their frustrations with discussing modern art.