Roger Shattuck: The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I., Rev. ed. (1955/1968)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, absurd, anarchism, art, art history, avant-garde, cubism, dada, dreams, france, literature, logic, montage, music history, painting, pataphysics, poetry, theatre, typography
In this book Roger Shattuck portrays the cultural bohemia of turn-of-the-century Paris who carried the arts into a period of renewal and accomplishment, and laid the ground-work for Dada and Surrealism.
“…Then came the idea–a kind of gambler’s hunch–that the trio Rousseau-Satie-Apollinaire represented several significant aspects of the period and could reveal them better than any single figure. The idea would not die. [..] Jarry had forced his way into the group and established himself close to the center of things. He helped clarify my underlying subject: how the fluid state known as bohemia, a cultural underground smacking of failure and fraud, crystallized for a few decades into a self-conscious avant-garde that carried the arts into a period of astonishingly varied renewal and accomplishment. [..] An enormous amount has been written on this era and these men since the first edition of this book in 1958. I have taken account of some of it by changing those passages where new facts have come to light.” (from the Preface to this edition)
First published in 1955
Publisher Vintage Books, 1968
397 pages
Review (Alfred Kazin, The Reporter, 1958)
Review (Sidney Tillim, College Art Journal, 1959)
Review (Justin O’Brien, The Saturday Review, 1958)
PDF (115 MB, no OCR)
Comment (0)Richard Kostelanetz: Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1993–)
Filed under book | Tags: · abstract art, aesthetics, art, art criticism, art history, art theory, avant-garde, dance, electroacoustic music, electronic music, experimental film, film, literature, mail art, music, music history, painting, performance art, poetry, radio art, sculpture, theatre, video, video art, visual poetry
“This book elucidates, celebrates, enumerates, and sometimes obliterates achievers and achievements in the avant-garde arts. Although it runs from A to Z, it could as easily have been written from Z to A (or in any other order you might imagine) and may be read from front to back, back to front, or point to point. It is opinionated, as all good dictionaries should be, but it is also inclusive, because there can never be just one avant-garde.
Blake • Rimbaud • Apollinaire • Stein • Cage • Lichtenstein • Tatlin • Keaton • Captain Beefheart • Hologram • Text-Sound Texts • Strobe Light • Grotowski • Soho • Micropress • Electronic Music • Reinhardt • Pound • Performance • Postmodern • Duchamp • Fuller • Oldenberg • Paik • Armory Show • Reich • Cunningham • Copy Culture • Pattern Poetry • Bread and Puppet Theatre” (from the back cover)
With contributions by Richard Carlin, Geof Huth, Gerald Janecek, Katy Matheson, H.R. Brittain, John Robert Colombo, Ulrike Michal Dorda, Charles Doria, and Robert Haller.
Publisher A Capella Books, an imprint of Chicago Review Press, 1993
ISBN 1556522029
246 pages
PDF
2nd edition (2000, 47 MB, added on 2020-3-18)
New additions (2011) selected for Soanyway by Derek Horton (HTML)
Douglas Kahn: Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · acoustics, art, art history, cold war, computer music, earth, electromagnetism, electronic music, energy, experimental music, geophysics, hearing, history of science, light, media history, music history, nature, noise, perception, radio, science, sound, sound art, sun, technology, telegraphy, telephone
“Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts, from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Douglas Kahn begins by evoking the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing along telegraph lines and the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard through the first telephone; he then traces the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s and beyond. Earth Sound Earth Signal rethinks energy at a global scale, from brainwaves to outer space, through detailed discussions of musicians, artists and scientists such as Alvin Lucier, Edmond Dewan, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, James Turrell, Robert Barry, Joyce Hinterding, and many others.”
Publisher University of California Press, 2013
ISBN 0520956834, 9780520956834
343 pages
Reviews: Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, 2013), Christopher Haworth (Organised Sound, 2015), Adam Trainer (Continuum, 2015).
PDF (removed on 2014-3-19 upon request of the publisher)
Comment (0)