In this Book
- Free as Gods: How the Jazz Age Reinvented Modernism
- Book
- 2017
- Published by: University Press of New England
summary
Among many art, music and literature lovers, particularly devotees of modernism, the expatriate community in France during the Jazz Age represents a remarkable convergence of genius in one place and period—one of the most glorious in history. Drawn by the presence of such avant-garde figures as Joyce and Picasso, artists and writers fled the Prohibition in the United States and revolution in Russia to head for the free-wheeling scene in Paris, where they made contact with rivals, collaborators, and a sophisticated audience of collectors and patrons. The outpouring of boundary-pushing novels, paintings, ballets, music, and design was so profuse that it belies the brevity of the era (1918–1929). Drawing on unpublished albums, drawings, paintings, and manuscripts, Charles A. Riley offers a fresh examination of both canonic and overlooked writers and artists and their works, by revealing them in conversation with one another. He illuminates social interconnections and artistic collaborations among the most famous—Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gershwin, Diaghilev, and Picasso—and goes a step further, setting their work alongside that of African Americans such as Sidney Bechet, Archibald Motley Jr., and Langston Hughes, and women such as Gertrude Stein and Nancy Cunard. Riley’s biographical and interpretive celebration of the many masterpieces of this remarkable group shows how the creative community of postwar Paris supported astounding experiments in content and form that still resonate today.
Table of Contents
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- Introduction
- pp. 1-14
- Part 1. Freedom: Anything Goes
- pp. 15-32
- 1. Enter the Ballets Russes
- pp. 33-44
- 5. Dancing on Dynamite: Nancy Cunard
- pp. 62-70
- 7. New Amazements: Hart Crane
- pp. 83-92
- 8. Weary Bluesman: Langston Hughes
- pp. 93-99
- 9. Making It in the Paris Art World
- pp. 100-110
- Part 2. Order: Blessed Rage
- pp. 111-112
- 10. Existential Octaves: Ernest Ansermet
- pp. 113-118
- 12. Connoisseur of Contrasts: Fernand Léger
- pp. 132-139
- 14. Prophet of Disorder: Oswald Spengler
- pp. 161-164
- Part 3. Truth: The Truest Sentence
- pp. 165-173
- 15. The Truth in Painting: Pablo Picasso
- pp. 174-193
- 17. The Malady of Language: Eugene Jolas
- pp. 213-220
- 18. The Real Thing: Ernest Hemingway
- pp. 221-236
- Bibliography
- pp. 249-258
Additional Information
ISBN
9781512600551
Related ISBN(s)
9781611688504
MARC Record
OCLC
962025984
Pages
271
Launched on MUSE
2017-08-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2017