Modernism’s History: A Study in Twentieth Century Art and Ideas

 For an art history major, you read this book after you pass the art history survey courses.  After learning the eras and their personal terminology, the art history major must destroy this learning with books such as this one.  Officially, Bernard Smith divides the book in two parts.  The first section recounting the Formalesque‘s rise in the 1800s and the second section, its existence in the 20th century.  For those lost (understandable), Smith uses this word in place of the more common term Modern to describe art during this era.

In reality, he actually divides the book by Formalesque’s dabbling with mysticism and their appropriation of art motifs from civilizations they deemed primitive.  While his writing takes a formal tone in this book, it does not stop him from criticizing artists of the Modern/Formalesque era for their appropriation of Asian/African symbols without fully understanding their original context.  The anger he has towards Modern artists and the way they treat different cultures as a monolithic Other emanates strongly.  He continues deconstructing cultural imperialism until the end of the book, when he profiles other places such as Japan and South Africa.  Especially in Japan, Smith looks at the way Japanese artists appropriated European styles in their work.  On the other hand, he did not do much of that in the South Africa section.  He does record the horrid era of Apartheid and how artists living struggled during time of repression, but only that much.  With this constant theme of appropriation, he dissects the whole artist as genius idea.  I have read criticisms similar to this in college, so I followed this very easily.

Besides appropriation and mysticism, he does write about other topics on art history, including the way historians classify eras of art and takes apart the very meaning of the word modern.  For Smith, the word Modern could apply to any artists of eras before the officially era.  Also, he looks at an era in art history he claims do not receive much press from other historians.  Then again, that era of art came from ugly places such as Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin.  All in all, his writing comes out strongest when he challenges the idea of classifying art and artist’s relationship with mysticism.  I guarantee that his prose there will sweep you off your feet.  On the down side, I wish he wrote more about Formalism and  its relationship to the term Formalesque.  I feel that these two have a lot in common with each other, besides sharing the same prefix.  However, his writing does go from invigorating to slow.  Also, it has this dense quality, which makes me hesitate to recommend to someone who has no familiarity with art history and all its quirks and problems.

ETA: Revamped some links.