LATE MODERNISM
THE ARTS AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN MODERN AMERICA
Casey Nelson Blake, Series Editor
Volumes in the series explore questions at the intersection of the history of expressive culture and the history of ideas in modern America. The series is meant as a bold intervention in two fields of cultural inquiry. It challenges scholars in American studies and cultural studies to move beyond sociological categories of analysis to consider the ideas that have informed and given form to artistic expression—whether architecture and the visual arts or music, dance, theater, and literature. The series also expands the domain of intellectual history by examining how artistic works, and aesthetic experience more generally, participate in the discussion of truth and value, civic purpose and personal meaning that have engaged scholars since the late nineteenth century.
Advisory Board: Richard Cándida Smith, Steven Conn, Lynn Garafola, Charles McGovern, Angela L. Miller, David M. Scobey, and Penny M. Von Eschen.
LATE MODERNISM
ART, CULTURE, AND POLITICS IN COLD WAR AMERICA
Robert Genter
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA • OXFORD
Copyright © 2010 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Genter, Robert.
Late modernism : art, culture, and politics in Cold War America / Robert Genter.
p. cm. — (The arts and intellectual life in modern America)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4264-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Modernism (Art) —United States. 2. Arts, American—20th century. 3. Arts and society—United States—History—20th century. 4. Arts—Political aspects—United States—History—20th century. 5. United States—Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title.
| NX504.G46 2010 | |
| 700'.41120973—dc22 | 2010008114 |
All texts by Ralph Ellison
© The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust
To my father and to the memory of my mother
CONTENTS
Introduction. A Genealogy of Postwar American Modernism
PART I High Modernism in America: Self and Society in the Early Cold War
One. Science, Postmodernity, and the Rise of High Modernism
PART II The Revolt of Romantic Modernism: Beatniks, Action Painters, and Reichians
Four. A Question of Character: The Dramaturgy of Erving Goffman and C. Wright Mills
Five. Beyond Primitivism and the Fellahin: Receiving James Baldwin’s Gift of Love
Six. Masculinity, Spontaneity, and the Act: The Bodily Ego of Jasper Johns
Seven. Rethinking the Feminine Within: The Cultural Politics of James Baldwin
PART III The Challenge of Late Modernism
Conclusion. The Legacy of Late Modernism
INTRODUCTION
A Genealogy of Postwar American Modernism
IN APRIL 1949, the San Francisco Art Association held a three-day “Western Round Table on Modern Art,” bringing together an eclectic group of artists, critics, and curators to discuss the state of modernism in America. Held at the San Francisco Museum of Art, the round table was designed “to bring a representation of the best informed opinion of the time to bear on questions about art today,” with the goal of achieving progress “in the exposure of hidden assumptions, in the uprooting of obsolete ideas, and in the framing of new questions.”1 The boldness of this agenda was matched by the boldness of the participants, which included art historian Robert Goldwater, artists Marcel Duchamp and Mark Tobey, composer Arnold Schoenberg, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. While the organizers of the conference tried to structure the discussion around specific themes such as the function of the artist, the roles of the critic and the collector, and the purpose of the museum, the participants, regardless of the topic, tended to return their comments to a statement made by Marcel Duchamp early in the proceedings in which he distinguished between “taste” and what he referred to as the “aesthetic echo.” According to the famed artist and provocateur, taste simply referred to the commonplace “likes and dislikes” of the average consumer, while the aesthetic echo referred to the willingness to forgo the familiar for the mysterious or unknown. “While many people have taste,” argued Duchamp, “only a few are equipped with aesthetic receptivity.”2 For Duchamp, the popular attacks against modern art in the postwar