Collecting as Modernist Practice
Winner of the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize of the Modernist Studies Association

In this highly original study, Jeremy Braddock focuses on collective forms of modernist expression—the art collection, the anthology, and the archive—and their importance in the development of institutional and artistic culture in the United States.

Using extensive archival research, Braddock's study synthetically examines the overlooked practices of major American art collectors and literary editors: Albert Barnes, Alain Locke, Duncan Phillips, Alfred Kreymborg, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, Katherine Dreier, and Carl Van Vechten. He reveals the way collections were devised as both models for modernism's future institutionalization and culturally productive objects and aesthetic forms in themselves. Rather than anchoring his study in the familiar figures of the individual poet, artist, and work, Braddock gives us an entirely new account of how modernism was made, one centered on the figure of the collector and the practice of collecting.

Collecting as Modernist Practice demonstrates that modernism's cultural identity was secured not so much through the selection of a canon of significant works as by the development of new practices that shaped the social meaning of art. Braddock has us revisit the contested terrain of modernist culture prior to the dominance of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the university curriculum so that we might consider modernisms that could have been.

Offering the most systematic review to date of the Barnes Foundation, an intellectual genealogy and analysis of The New Negro anthology, and studies of a wide range of hitherto ignored anthologies and archives, Braddock convincingly shows how artistic and literary collections helped define the modernist movement in the United States.

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Collecting as Modernist Practice
Winner of the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize of the Modernist Studies Association

In this highly original study, Jeremy Braddock focuses on collective forms of modernist expression—the art collection, the anthology, and the archive—and their importance in the development of institutional and artistic culture in the United States.

Using extensive archival research, Braddock's study synthetically examines the overlooked practices of major American art collectors and literary editors: Albert Barnes, Alain Locke, Duncan Phillips, Alfred Kreymborg, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, Katherine Dreier, and Carl Van Vechten. He reveals the way collections were devised as both models for modernism's future institutionalization and culturally productive objects and aesthetic forms in themselves. Rather than anchoring his study in the familiar figures of the individual poet, artist, and work, Braddock gives us an entirely new account of how modernism was made, one centered on the figure of the collector and the practice of collecting.

Collecting as Modernist Practice demonstrates that modernism's cultural identity was secured not so much through the selection of a canon of significant works as by the development of new practices that shaped the social meaning of art. Braddock has us revisit the contested terrain of modernist culture prior to the dominance of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the university curriculum so that we might consider modernisms that could have been.

Offering the most systematic review to date of the Barnes Foundation, an intellectual genealogy and analysis of The New Negro anthology, and studies of a wide range of hitherto ignored anthologies and archives, Braddock convincingly shows how artistic and literary collections helped define the modernist movement in the United States.

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Collecting as Modernist Practice

Collecting as Modernist Practice

by Jeremy Braddock
Collecting as Modernist Practice

Collecting as Modernist Practice

by Jeremy Braddock

Hardcover

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Overview

Winner of the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize of the Modernist Studies Association

In this highly original study, Jeremy Braddock focuses on collective forms of modernist expression—the art collection, the anthology, and the archive—and their importance in the development of institutional and artistic culture in the United States.

Using extensive archival research, Braddock's study synthetically examines the overlooked practices of major American art collectors and literary editors: Albert Barnes, Alain Locke, Duncan Phillips, Alfred Kreymborg, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, Katherine Dreier, and Carl Van Vechten. He reveals the way collections were devised as both models for modernism's future institutionalization and culturally productive objects and aesthetic forms in themselves. Rather than anchoring his study in the familiar figures of the individual poet, artist, and work, Braddock gives us an entirely new account of how modernism was made, one centered on the figure of the collector and the practice of collecting.

Collecting as Modernist Practice demonstrates that modernism's cultural identity was secured not so much through the selection of a canon of significant works as by the development of new practices that shaped the social meaning of art. Braddock has us revisit the contested terrain of modernist culture prior to the dominance of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the university curriculum so that we might consider modernisms that could have been.

Offering the most systematic review to date of the Barnes Foundation, an intellectual genealogy and analysis of The New Negro anthology, and studies of a wide range of hitherto ignored anthologies and archives, Braddock convincingly shows how artistic and literary collections helped define the modernist movement in the United States.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781421403649
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 02/15/2012
Series: Hopkins Studies in Modernism
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Jeremy Braddock is an associate professor of English at Cornell University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Collections Mediation Modernism 1

1 After Imagisme 29

The Lyric Year and the Crisis in Cultural Valuation 29

The Anthology as Weapon 39

The Others Formation 50

Reprisal Anthologies 64

2 The Domestication of Modernism: The Phillips Memorial Gallery in the 1920s 71

Pictorial Publicity 71

Subconscious Stimulation, a Professional Public Sphere 77

Problems in Collecting Pictures 87

Akhenaten, Patron of Modernism 93

3 The Barnes Foundation, Institution of the New Psychologies 106

Against Dilettantism 106

A System for the New Spirit 111

Collection and Institution 125

The Art of Memory in the Age of the Unconscious 137

4 The New Negro in the Field of Collections 156

Sage Homme Noir 156

Precursor Anthologies 159

Coterie, Movement, Race 173

The Heritage of The New Negro 185

Downstairs from the Harlem Museum 194

5 Modernism's Archives: Afterlives of the Modernist Collection 209

Two Termini 209

Two Consecrations 212

Two Archives 214

Notes 229

Bibliography 279

Index 301

What People are Saying About This

Brent Hayes Edwards

With his kaleidoscopic analysis of the efflorescence of collecting in the first decades of the twentieth century, Braddock transforms the cartography of transatlantic modernism. His remarkably erudite reading of a wide range of practices demonstrates not only the prevalence of collecting but also its significance as one of the key modes of modernist aesthetics.

Brent Hayes Edwards, Columbia University

Jesse Matz

Braddock pieces together a fascinating and important new cultural history of modernism. It is a marvelous achievement, one that will be amply praised for the way it places African American culture at the center of modernism.

Jesse Matz, Kenyon College

John Xiros Cooper

Meticulously researched and lucidly written, Collecting as Modernist Practice enriches the conversation about the spread of modernism into mainstream society and its pervasive presence in the West.

John Xiros Cooper, The University of British Columbia

From the Publisher

Braddock pieces together a fascinating and important new cultural history of modernism. It is a marvelous achievement, one that will be amply praised for the way it places African American culture at the center of modernism.
—Jesse Matz, Kenyon College

With his kaleidoscopic analysis of the efflorescence of collecting in the first decades of the twentieth century, Braddock transforms the cartography of transatlantic modernism. His remarkably erudite reading of a wide range of practices demonstrates not only the prevalence of collecting but also its significance as one of the key modes of modernist aesthetics.
—Brent Hayes Edwards, Columbia University

This is a terrific book that will add substantially to general accounts of early U.S. modernism by providing a finely drawn map of the emergence of some key collections. Just as importantly, it will bring into the open what has been hiding in plain sight: the multidimensional, generative role of the collection in modernism.
—Janet Lyon, The Pennsylvania State University

Meticulously researched and lucidly written, Collecting as Modernist Practice enriches the conversation about the spread of modernism into mainstream society and its pervasive presence in the West.
—John Xiros Cooper, The University of British Columbia

Janet Lyon

This is a terrific book that will add substantially to general accounts of early U.S. modernism by providing a finely drawn map of the emergence of some key collections. Just as importantly, it will bring into the open what has been hiding in plain sight: the multidimensional, generative role of the collection in modernism.

Janet Lyon, The Pennsylvania State University

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