Robin Walz's updated Modernism, now part of the Seminar Studies series, has been updated to include significant primary source material and features to make it more accessible for students returning to, or studying the topic for the first time.

The twentieth century was a period of seismic change on a global scale, witnessing two world wars, the rise and fall of communism, the establishment of a global economy, the beginnings of global warming and a complete reversal in the status of women in large parts of the world.

The modernist movements of the early twentieth century launched a cultural revolution without which the multi-media-driven world in which we live today would not have been possible. Today modernism is enshrined in art galleries and university courses. Its techniques of abstraction and montage, and its creative impulse to innovate and shock, are the stock-in-trade of commercial advertising, feature films, television and computer-generated graphics.

In this concise cultural history, Robin Walz vividly recaptures what was revolutionary about modernism. He shows how an aesthetic concept, arising from a diversity of cultural movements, from Cubism and Bauhaus to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, and operating in different ways across the fields of art, literature, music, design and architecture, came to turn intellectual and cultural life and assumptions upside down, first in Europe and then around the world.

From the nineteenth century origins of modernism to its postmodern legacies, this book will give the reader access to the big picture of modernism as a dynamic historical process and an unfinished project which still speaks to our times.

New to the Seminar Studies series, this clear, readable and jargon-free introduction to the main features and contributions of Modernism, now in a new edition, has been updated with loads of additional primary source material within the text.

About the Author

Robin Walz is Associate Professor of History at the University of Alaska Southeast. He has published books and articles on Modernism and aspects of popular culture in the twentieth century.

Book Information
ISBN 9781408264492
Author Robin Walz
Format Paperback
Page Count 204
Imprint Pearson Education Limited
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 366g
Dimensions(mm) 240mm * 176mm * 11mm