Publisher's Synopsis
In this volume, William B. Scott and Peter M. Rutkoff explore how the varied features of the urban experience in New York inspired the work of artists such as Isadora Duncan, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Eugene O'Neill, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, John Cage, Arthur Miller and James Baldwin, who together shaped 20th-century American culture. In painting, sculpture, photography, film, music, dance, theatre and architecture, New York artists redefined what it meant to be "modern". Unlike Paris, London and Berlin, New York's complexity made it impossible for any single school, academy or patron to enforce a dominant style or aesthetic. By the 1950s, New York Modern had matured into an artistic culture that celebrated diversity and controversy. Neither a style nor a school, New York Modern was an artistic dialogue - part engagement, part resistance, part celebration -that invited artists from a variety of backgrounds and with divergent concerns to voice their particular understandings of urban life and its relationship to modern art. Their independence and vitality established New York City as America's cultural centre in the 20th century.
