Thomas Harrison: 1910: The Emancipation of Dissonance (1996)

The year 1910 marks an astonishing, and largely unrecognized, juncture in Western history. In this perceptive interdisciplinary analysis, Thomas Harrison addresses the extraordinary intellectual achievement of the time. Focusing on the cultural climate of Middle Europe and paying particular attention to the life and work of Carlo Michelstaedter, he deftly portrays the reciprocal implications of different discourses—philosophy, literature, sociology, music, and painting. His beautifully balanced and deeply informed study provides a new, wider, and more ambitious definition of expressionism and shows the significance of this movement in shaping the artistic and intellectual mood of the age.

1910 probes the recurrent themes and obsessions in the work of intellectuals as diverse as Egon Schiele, Georg Trakl, Vasily Kandinsky, Georg Lukàcs, Georg Simmel, Dino Campana, and Arnold Schoenberg. Together with Michelstaedter, who committed suicide in 1910 at the age of 23, these thinkers shared the essential concerns of expressionism: a sense of irresolvable conflict in human existence, the philosophical status of death, and a quest for the nature of human subjectivity. Expressionism, Harrison argues provocatively, was a last, desperate attempt by the intelligentsia to defend some of the most venerable assumptions of European culture. This ideological desperation, he claims, was more than a spiritual prelude to World War I: it was an unheeded, prophetic critique.

Publisher University of California Press, 1996
ISBN 0520200438, 9780520200432
264 pages

Reviews (Martino Marazzi; Tyrus Miller; Daniela Bini; Christopher Hailey; Richard Mattin; Dennis Sexsmith)
Review (Laura A. McLary, Monatshefte)
Review (Thomas Kovach, Austrian History Yearbook)
Review (Marco Codebo, Carte Italiane)
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Anthony Enns, Shelley Trower (eds.): Vibratory Modernism (2013)

“Vibratory Modernism is a collection of original essays that will enable scholars and students to explore how vibrations provided a means of bridging science and art – two fields that became increasingly separate over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book demonstrates the vital role played by vibrations in the fields of physics, physiology, spiritualism, and by new vibratory technologies, in helping to shape the way modernist art was made and viewed. The chapters are placed into three connecting parts focusing on literature, the visual arts and theatre, each part highlighting the diverse ways in which writers, artists and performers engaged with the fascinating world of vibrations.”

Publisher Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 1137027258, 9781137027252
288 pages

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Alice Goldfarb Marquis: Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare (2002)

“One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Duchamp, the son of a successful notary, was also a shrewd manager of his image and interests — so much so that many of those who have written about him have been dazzled by his self-created persona when trying to assess his elusive legacy and equally elusive character. Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare is not the first full-length biography of Duchamp, but it is the first to present him in all his human contradictions and to take a refreshingly objective look at his real contribution to modern art. The well-known facts are beautifully explored here: Duchamp’s myriad personal relations (with family, lovers, collectors, and artists ranging from Man Ray, Picabia, and Breton to the Stettheimer sisters and the Arensbergs); the creation of major works such as the readymades and the Large Glass; his passion for chess and presumed abandonment of painting. But beyond this, author Alice Goldfarb Marquis looks past the diffident, humorous mask that Duchamp wore with friend and acquaintance alike, to explore the passions and insecurities that motivated many of his artistic and personal evolutions. She separates the artist from the con artist, to determine just how profound an influence Duchamp has really been. The books is based on numerous unpublished sources and first-hand interviews.”

Publisher MFA Publications, Boston, 2002
ISBN 0878466444, 9780878466443
368 pages
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