Modernism

In this concise introduction, intellectual historian Robin Walz shows how modernism constituted an avant-garde cultural revolution across the fields of art, literature, music, design and architecture in the twentieth century.

This comprehensive history traces the development of modernism from its nineteenth-century antecedents through its postmodern legacies, and guides the reader through the complex critical issues of the era. Walz explores:

-    The historical origins of modernism in Romanticism, Impressionism, Symbolism, primitivism and the 'perceptual revolution' in science, psychology and literature.

-    The development of high modernism in Europe during the early twentieth century through such movements such as Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, Constructivism, Surrealism, and the Bauhaus.

-   The international transformations of modernism since the mid-twentieth century, including the rise of mass consumerism, the neo-avant-garde, pop art and postmodernism.

This expanded second edition is now supported by a comprehensive documents section, chronology and whos who, as well as a new colour plate section. Students of twentieth-century European history, intellectual history, art history and cultural studies will find this book an invaluable aid to understanding the development of this absorbing movement, which remains even today an unfinished project.

Robin Walz (Professor of History, University of Alaska) is an intellectual and cultural historian and the author of Pulp Surrealism: Insolent Popular Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Paris (2000).