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
[Pells’] book crackles with intellectual energy and showcases a formidable body of knowledge that leaps across all kinds of barriers. . . . Pells tackles big ideas in prose clear and accessible enough to make you forget you’re reading an academic text. He can talk John Wayne and Igor Stravinsky. You could say he’s a pretty modern guy.—Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News
— Chris Vognar
Pells serves as an engagingly interesting and learned guide . . . Pells’ reading of American art, music, and movies is at its freshest and is most destabilizing of the easy generalities that we wrap around the products of American culture.—Daniel T. Rodgers, Reviews in American History
— Daniel T. Rodgers
Reviews in American History
"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
[Pells’] book crackles with intellectual energy and showcases a formidable body of knowledge that leaps across all kinds of barriers. . . . Pells tackles big ideas in prose clear and accessible enough to make you forget you’re reading an academic text. He can talk John Wayne and Igor Stravinsky. You could say he’s a pretty modern guy.” —Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News
Dallas Morning News - Chris Vognar
Pells serves as an engagingly interesting and learned guide . . . Pells’ reading of American art, music, and movies is at its freshest and is most destabilizing of the easy generalities that we wrap around the products of American culture.” —Daniel T. Rodgers, Reviews in American History
Reviews in American History - Daniel T. Rodgers
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.
"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
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
In this original look at modernism, Pells (history, Univ. of Texas, Austin; Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II) packs a wealth of informative detail into individual chapters on art, film, music, and architecture—touching upon styles from jazz and art deco to abstract expressionism and film noir while placing their development into historical context. Along the way, he takes a fresh look at the negative presumption that the American cultural stamp in these areas has overshadowed that of other traditions. Pells underscores the ways in which artistic visionaries ranging from George Gershwin to Jackson Pollock drew serious inspiration from a vast wealth of other cultural sources—as eclectic as the melting pot of America's heritage—in order to explore and create new artistic horizons.Verdict An education in American modernism, this is also well-researched, thought-provoking, and uplifting analytical commentary on its cultural sources and universal influence. It will engage both scholars and lay readers and is essential reading for those interested in the myriad factors that have shaped contemporary modern culture.—Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ
