Publisher Description

Rejecting the typical view of formalism's exclusive engagement with essentialized and purified notions of abstraction and its disengagement from issues of gender and embodiment, Brennan explores the ways in which these categories were intertwined. Historically and theoretically."--Jacket.

Machine generated contents note: -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction: Modernism against Representation -- 1. Painting as Affect Machine -- 2. Freedom and Memory: Bergson's Theory of Hypnotic Agency -- 3. The Influence of Others: Matisse and Personnalite -- 4. Matisse and Mimesis -- Conclusion. From Art to Object: The Case of Paul Valery -- Notes -- Index.

"A series of linked essays that considers different aspects of Matisse's life and work, revealing how the artist worked against many of the main tenets of modernism"--Provided by publisher.

How does the jazz of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and others fit into the great tradition of the modern arts between 1920 and 1950? In "Jazz Modernism, " one of our finest cultural historians provides the answer. 127 illustrations, some in color.

Previously published: London: Fig Tree, [2014].

An ambitious and revelatory investigation of the black female figure in modern art, tracing the legacy of Manet through to contemporary art This revelatory study investigates how changing modes of representing the black female figure were foundational to the development of modern art. Posing Modernity examines the legacy of Édouard Manet's Olympia (1863), arguing that this radical painting marked a fitfully evolving shift toward modernist portrayals of the black figure as an active participant in everyday life rather than as an exotic "other." Denise Murrell explores the little-known interfaces between the avant-gardists of nineteenth-century Paris and the post-abolition community of free black Parisians. She traces the impact of Manet's reconsideration of the black model into the twentieth century and across the Atlantic, where Henri Matisse visited Harlem jazz clubs and later produced transformative portraits of black dancers as icons of modern beauty. These and other works by the artist are set in dialogue with the urbane "New Negro" portraiture style with which Harlem Renaissance artists including Charles Alston and Laura Wheeler Waring defied racial stereotypes. The book concludes with a look at how Manet's and Matisse's depictions influenced Romare Bearden and continue to reverberate in the work of such global contemporary artists as Faith Ringgold, Aimé Mpane, Maud Sulter, and Mickalene Thomas, who draw on art history to explore its multiple voices. Featuring over 175 illustrations and profiles of several models, Posing Modernity illuminates long-obscured figures and proposes that a history of modernism cannot be complete until it examines the vital role of the black female muse within it. Published in association with the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University in the City of New York Exhibition Schedule: Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York (10/24/18-02/10/19) Musée d'Orsay (03/25/19-07/14/19)

A compact introduction to modernism--why it began, what it is, and how it hasshaped virtually all aspects of 20th and 21st century life

Focusing on the period 1905-1913, this provocative & ground-breaking new book refutes the popular view of Matisse as a painter dedicated to the simple pleasures of decorative line & sensuous colour. Wright discovers a darker, more complex side to the artist.

An unprecedented study that reveals tapestry's role as a modernist medium and a model for the movement's discourse on both sides of the Atlantic in the decades following World War II