- [UNTITLED]
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Periodizing Modernism
- Modernism Before and After Theory
- The Modernist Archive
- Innovations in Poetry
- Modernist Narratives: Revisions and Rereadings
- The Modernist Novel in Europe
- Staging Modernism: A New Drama
- Modernists as Critics
- Gendering the Modernist Text
- Class Positions
- Queer Modernism
- Lesbian Sexuality in the Story of Modernism
- Harlem Modernisms
- Colonial Encounters
- Travelling Modernists
- The Machine Age
- Modernism in the Age of Mass Culture and Consumption
- Publication, Patronage, Censorship: Literary Production and the Fortunes of Modernist Value
- Modernism in Magazines
- Primitivism: Modernism as Anthropology
- Questions of History
- Modernism and Philosophy
- The Modernist Road to the Unconscious
- Religion, Psychical Research, Spiritualism, and the Occult
- Science in the Age of Modernism
- Violence, Art, and War
- Modernist Politics: Socialism, Anarchism, Fascism
- Cinema, Modernism, and Modernity
- Photography and the Age of the Snapshot
- Modernism and the Visual Arts
- Dancing Bodies and Modernity
- Modernism on Radio
- Modernist Music
- Architecture, Design, and Modern Living
- Imagining the Modernist City
- Paris: Symbolism, Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism
- Berlin: Expressionism, Dada, Neue Sachlichkeit
- London: Rhymers, Imagists, and Vorticists
- Futurism in Europe
- The Modernist Atlantic: New York, Chicago, and Europe
- Modernist Coteries and Communities
- Scottish Modernism
- Irish Modernism
- Welsh Modernism
- Central European Modernisms
- Russian Modernism
- Nordic Modernisms
- Modernisms in English Canada
- Hispanic Literature and Modernism
- Caribbean Modernism
- Modernism and African Literature
- Modernisms in India
- Antipodean Modernisms: Australia and New Zealand
- Chinese Modernisms
- Modernism and Colonial Modernity in Early Twentieth‐Century Japan
- Afterword: ‘Newness’ in Modernisms, Early and Late
- Bibliography
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This article examines class position in modernist art. It discusses Ezra Pound and Alexandr Rodchenko's views on modernism and art, which suggest possible positions that could be adopted by modernists vis-à-vis the question of art's function in the modern world. These include defences of artists' superiority to society, justifications of the value-conferring power of their work, and arguments in favour of art's isolation from politics on the grounds that it depended on its freedom from non-aesthetic concerns. The article highlights the importance of considering social and cultural conditions in providing an account of modernism's relationship to issues of class.
Keywords: modernist art, class position, Ezra Pound, Alexandr Rodchenko, politics, social conditions, cultural conditions
Andrzej Gasiorek is Reader in Twentieth-Century Literature at the University of Birmingham. He has written widely on modernism and on post-war British fiction. He is a co-editor of the journal Modernist Cultures and author of Post War British Fiction: Realism and After (1995), Wyndham Lewis and Modernism (2004) and J.G. Ballard (2005).
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- [UNTITLED]
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- Periodizing Modernism
- Modernism Before and After Theory
- The Modernist Archive
- Innovations in Poetry
- Modernist Narratives: Revisions and Rereadings
- The Modernist Novel in Europe
- Staging Modernism: A New Drama
- Modernists as Critics
- Gendering the Modernist Text
- Class Positions
- Queer Modernism
- Lesbian Sexuality in the Story of Modernism
- Harlem Modernisms
- Colonial Encounters
- Travelling Modernists
- The Machine Age
- Modernism in the Age of Mass Culture and Consumption
- Publication, Patronage, Censorship: Literary Production and the Fortunes of Modernist Value
- Modernism in Magazines
- Primitivism: Modernism as Anthropology
- Questions of History
- Modernism and Philosophy
- The Modernist Road to the Unconscious
- Religion, Psychical Research, Spiritualism, and the Occult
- Science in the Age of Modernism
- Violence, Art, and War
- Modernist Politics: Socialism, Anarchism, Fascism
- Cinema, Modernism, and Modernity
- Photography and the Age of the Snapshot
- Modernism and the Visual Arts
- Dancing Bodies and Modernity
- Modernism on Radio
- Modernist Music
- Architecture, Design, and Modern Living
- Imagining the Modernist City
- Paris: Symbolism, Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism
- Berlin: Expressionism, Dada, Neue Sachlichkeit
- London: Rhymers, Imagists, and Vorticists
- Futurism in Europe
- The Modernist Atlantic: New York, Chicago, and Europe
- Modernist Coteries and Communities
- Scottish Modernism
- Irish Modernism
- Welsh Modernism
- Central European Modernisms
- Russian Modernism
- Nordic Modernisms
- Modernisms in English Canada
- Hispanic Literature and Modernism
- Caribbean Modernism
- Modernism and African Literature
- Modernisms in India
- Antipodean Modernisms: Australia and New Zealand
- Chinese Modernisms
- Modernism and Colonial Modernity in Early Twentieth‐Century Japan
- Afterword: ‘Newness’ in Modernisms, Early and Late
- Bibliography
- Index