Cinematic city: the Spanish avant-garde, modernity and mass culture

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Labanyi
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Cinematic City

3. Critical theory and modernism

2017 ◽  
pp. 30-38
Author(s):  
Stephen Eric Bronner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Mass Society ◽  
The Individual

The end of the nineteenth century witnessed the birth of an international avant-garde that focused upon alienation, standardization, and the liberation of the individual from constrictive social norms. Impressionists, Cubists, Expressionists, Futurists, Dadaists, Surrealists, and representatives from many other styles provided a blizzard of philosophical–aesthetic manifestos that blended political with cultural resistance to mass society. The Frankfurt School’s inner circle was sympathetic from the start; modernism provided a response to the ontology of false conditions and, indeed, an avant-garde opposition to mass culture provided inspiration and cohesion. ‘Critical theory and modernism’ explains how the unflinching support of modernism and experimental art by the Frankfurt School confirmed both its cultural radicalism and contempt for totalitarianism.

scholarly journals ’We Have Become Niggers!’: Josephine Baker as a Threat to Viennese Culture

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-530
Author(s):  
Roman Horak
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Perceived Threat ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Low Culture ◽  
Josephine Baker ◽  
The Waves

Early 1928 Josephine Baker, by that time a famous dancer and singer, came to Vienna to be part of a vaudeville show. Even before her arrival the waves went high – her possible presence in Vienna caused a major uproar there. Various commentators constructed an image of Baker that was based on the assumption that she was seriously attacked on the values of traditional European culture and, furthermore, true Viennese culture. In my essay, where I address the Viennese Negerskandal more directly, I explore the various discourses that produced this ‘event’ along the interface of mass culture/avant-garde and high/low culture. It is evident that these events centre on a construction of ‘blackness’ and of ‘black cultural expression’; it goes without saying that racism and sexism play a central role. I will, however, try to contextualize the ‘nigger scandal’ in a broader setting: against the background of Vienna in the late 1920s the perceived threat of ‘Americanisation’ will be discussed.

Constructing the Postwar Art Novel: Paul Bowles, James Laughlin, and the Making of The Sheltering Sky

PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 186-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Brier
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
American Culture ◽  
World War ◽  
Postwar Art ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Paul Bowles ◽  
New Directions

This paper considers the story of the making of Paul Bowles's novel The Sheltering Sky as a case study for the emergence of the art novel as a commercial niche after World War II. Bowles's novel expresses disdain for American culture and depicts its characters' flight to the Sahara, but its subject matter contrasts with the story of the novel's creation: an unlikely collection of American mass-culture and high-culture institutions, including Doubleday, the William Morris Agency, and the avant-garde publisher New Directions, collaborated in the production and promotion of The Sheltering Sky. The story of the novel's making and of its immediate commercial success, the product of a New Directions marketing campaign that effectively advertised Bowles's distance from American culture, exemplifies a neglected aspect of postwar cultural history, when institutions from across the cultural spectrum recognized the existence of a growing market for avant-garde detachment. (EB)

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document