Modernism's Other Work: The Art Object's Political Life

Modernism's Other Work challenges deeply held critical beliefs about the meaning-in particular the political meaning-of modernism's commitment to the work of art as an object detached from the world. Ranging over works of poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, and film, it argues that modernism's core aesthetic problem-the artwork's status as an object, and a subject's relation to it-poses fundamental questions of agency, freedom, and politics. With fresh accounts of works by canonical figur...