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Richard Pells

Modernist America: Art, Music, Movies, and the Globalization of American Culture Hardcover – March 29, 2011

by Richard Pells (Author)

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America's global cultural impact is largely seen as one-sided, with critics claiming that it has undermined other countries' languages and traditions. But contrary to popular belief, the cultural relationship between the United States and the world has been reciprocal, says Richard Pells. The United States not only plays a large role in shaping international entertainment and tastes, it is also a consumer of foreign intellectual and artistic influences.

Pells reveals how the American artists, novelists, composers, jazz musicians, and filmmakers who were part of the Modernist movement were greatly influenced by outside ideas and techniques. People across the globe found familiarities in American entertainment, resulting in a universal culture that has dominated the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and fulfilled the aim of the Modernist movement—to make the modern world seem more intelligible.

Modernist America brilliantly explains why George Gershwin's music, Cole Porter's lyrics, Jackson Pollock's paintings, Bob Fosse's choreography, Marlon Brando's acting, and Orson Welles's storytelling were so influential, and why these and other artists and entertainers simultaneously represent both an American and a modern global culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his impressive new study, Pells (Radical Visions and American Dreams) works to dispel the common misconception that Modernism originated in America. He argues that Modernist America was a land not of invention, but of adaptation, blossoming through a mutual transatlantic relationship, mass immigration, and a healthy "disregard for cultural borders." Pells surveys the power of art in the 20th century, looking at the ways in which Picasso and Cubism, Futurism, and stream-of-consciousness literature influenced artists, such as Jackson Pollock, and subsequent movements. He examines the influx of European intellectuals during WWII, which stimulated a new era of creativity infused with non-American ideologies. Architectural celebrities Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, indebted to the Bauhaus, transformed cities; and the skyscraper became a symbol of the modern age. When Hollywood faltered, the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism took center stage and influenced American cinema. The author's cultural appraisal of evolving musical tastes is nothing short of extraordinary; he begins in the 20th century, with "...in the history of Western modernism, the unrivaled American contribution...had always been jazz," then tracks back, folding in early Hollywood musicals (which introduced the world to Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Bernstein, and others) and even Tin Pan Alley. Debates over high and low art, and the avant-garde vs. popular culture, rage throughout this absorbing volume. (Mar.)

Review

“[T]here is much to enjoy here . . . a rousing jaunt through a period of remarkable upheavals in entertainment and the arts.”—The Wall Street Journal (The Wall Street Journal)

"Richard Pells's book leaps, lunges, gallops, and, once in a while, pirouettes its way toward something very close toa unified field theory of twentieth-century American culture."—Gene Seymour, Bookforum (Gene Seymour Bookforum)

"Pells has written a capacious, original, even compelling book...there is nothing like this in print."—Daniel Horowitz, Smith College (Daniel Horowitz)

"Richard Pells was one of the first scholars to teach us the importance of looking beyond national boundaries in writing the history of American culture. Now he has valuably extended that lesson in this rich, accessible study of modernism’s transatlantic reach."—Joan Shelley Rubin, University of Rochester (Joan Shelley Rubin)

"In his cosmopolitan study of American modernism, Richard Pells reveals the open borders for artistic work. With his impressive command of several art forms, high and popular, he illuminates the transnational circuitry of artistic borrowing and innovation."—Thomas Bender, author of New York Intellect (Thomas Bender)

“By showing that American modernism emerged as part of an international artistic movement, Richard Pells provides an important contribution to the growing scholarly literature on the globalization of American culture.”—Elaine Tyler May, author of America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril and Liberation (Elaine Tyler May)

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press; 1st edition (March 29, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0300115040
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300115048
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.9 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1.38 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,468,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #781 in Modernism Literary Criticism (Books)
- #11,199 in Music History & Criticism (Books)
- #12,041 in Movie History & Criticism

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Richard Pells

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I am Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Texas in Austin. I specialize in 20th century American cultural history, with a special focus on the impact of American culture on other countries. I have received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, as well as 6 Fulbright chairs and senior lectureships.

I have lived and lectured all over Europe, as well as in Turkey, Southeast Asia, Australia, Mexico, and Brazil. It was these experiences living abroad that stimulated my interest in how America affected other people's cultures, and how foreign cultures affected America. These themes are particularly emphasized in two of my books: Not Like Us and Modernist America.

My books have been reviewed in Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Republic. I also contribute articles regularly to magazines and newspapers including the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Los Angeles Times, and the International Herald Tribune.

My most recent book, War Babies: The Generation That Changed America, is about those Americans born between 1939 and 1945. The book deals with contemporary American leaders in movies, music, journalism, sports, and politics.

For more on my interests, see my website: www.richardpells.com

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ROROTOKO

"The cultural relation between America and the rest of the world is not one-sided."

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 7, 2011

This book is on the Rorotoko list. Professor Pells's interview on "Modernist America" ran as the Rorotoko Cover Feature on May 30, 2011 (and can be read in the Rorotoko archive).