Modernism: The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond

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.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 11/01/2007
ISBN: 9780393052053
Pages: 640
Weight: 2.27lbs
Size: 9.44h x 6.56w x 1.68d

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 07/01/2007 pg. 58
Publishers Weekly 09/03/2007 pg. 48
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2007 pg. 969
Booklist 11/01/2007 pg. 16
New York Times Book Review 12/30/2007 pg. 8
New York Times Book Review 01/06/2008 pg. 22
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2008 pg. 224
New Yorker (The) 06/09/2008 pg. 123