Lewis Mumford: Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s (2007)

Although Lewis Mumford is widely acknowledged as the seminal American critic of architecture and urbanism in the twentieth century, he is less known for his art criticism. He began contributing to this field in the early 1920s, and his influence peaked between 1932 and 1937, when he was art critic for the New Yorker. This book, for the first time, assembles Mumford’s important art criticism in a single volume. His columns bring wit and insight to bear on a range of artists, from establishment figures like Matisse and Brancusi to relatively new arrivals like Reginald Marsh and Georgia O’Keeffe. These articles provide an unusual window onto the New York art scene just as it was casting off provincialism in favor of a more international outlook. On a deeper level, the columns probe beneath the surface of modern art, revealing an alienation that Mumford believed symptomatic of a larger cultural disintegration.
Many of the themes Mumford addresses overlap with those of his more familiar architectural criticism: the guiding role of the past in stimulating creativity in the present, the increasing congestion of the modern metropolis, the alarming lack of human control over modern technology, and the pressing need to restore organic balance to everyday living. Though he was open to new movements emanating from Europe, Mumford became the chief advocate of a progressive American modernism that was both socially aware and formally inventive.

Edited and with an Introduction by Robert Wojtowicz
Published by University of California Press, 2007
ISBN 0520258088, 9780520258082
265 pages

Key terms:
Lewis Mumford, Alfred Stieglitz, John Marin, abstract art, Yorker, Winslow Homer, Julien Levy Gallery, surrealist, Walter Pach, William Gropper, Grant Wood, Thomas Eakins, Arthur Dove, Mary Cassatt, Cubist, Armory Show, Le Corbusier, Casey Nelson Blake, painter, Impressionism

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Nicolas Donin, Bernard Stiegler (eds.): Révolutions industrielles de la musique (2004) [French]

“Si les pratiques musicales du XIXe siècle ont été largement structurées par la standardisation de l’orchestre symphonique et le saut – qualitatif et quantitatif – du piano vers l’universel, le XXe siècle n’est-il pas celui d’une nouvelle révolution industrielle de la musique ? Cette dernière passerait à la fois par l’adoption, dans la diffusion puis la création musicales, des techniques et technologies nouvelles que sont la radiodiffusion, l’enregistrement sonore ou la synthèse des sons par ordinateur ; et par la gestation d’un nouveau système fonctionnel de la musique, désormais enjeu majeur des industries culturelles, mais aussi arme politique et économique émancipée de ses anciennes fonctions militaires, religieuses et familiales. Depuis une dizaine d’années, enfin, une nouvelle époque de cette organologie semble advenir : c’est pour essayer de la comprendre que nous avons interrogé les bouleversements, parfois encore sous-estimés, qu’ont subis instruments et dispositifs musicaux au siècle dernier.”

Nicolas Donin et Bernard Stiegler (éd.), Révolutions industrielles de la musique : Cahiers de Médiologie, n° 18, 2004.

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Gene Ray: Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to September 11 (2005)

The eleven interconnected essays of this book penetrate the dense historical knots binding terror, power, and the aesthetic sublime and bring the results to bear on the trauma of September 11 and the subsequent “war on terror.” Through rigorous critical studies of major works of post- 1945 and contemporary culture, the book traces transformations in art and critical theory in the aftermath of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Critically engaging with the work of continental philosophers Theodor W Adorno, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Francois Lyotard and of contemporary artists Joeph Beuys, Damien Hirst, and Boaz Arad, the book confronts the shared cultural conditions that made Auschwitz and Hiroshima possible and offers searching meditations on the structure and meaning of the traumatic historical “event.” Ray argues that globalization cannot be separated from the collective tasks of working through historical genocide. He provocatively concludes that the curent US-led “war on terror” must be grasped as a globalized inability to mourn.

Contents:
Introduction: The Hit * Reading the Lisbon Earthquake: Adorno, Lyotard, and the Contemporary Sublime * Joseph Beuys and the “After-Auschwitz” Sublime * Ground Zero: Hiroshima Haunts 9/11 * Mirroring Evil: Auschwitz, Art, and the “War on Terror” * Little Glass House of Horror: Taking Damien Hirst Seriously * Blasted Moments: Remarking a Hiroshima Image * Installing a “New Cosmopolitics”: Derrida and the Writers * The Trauerspiel in the Age of Its Global Reproducibility: Boaz Arad’s Hitler Videos * Listening with the Third Ear: Echoes from Ground Zero * Conditioning Adorno: “After Auschwitz” Now

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
ISBN 140396940X, 9781403969408
188 pages

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