Modernism: The Lure of Heresy - From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond

(Paperback)

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A brilliant, provocative long essay on the rise and fall and survival of modernism, by the English-languages' greatest living cultural historian. In his most ambitious endeavour since Freud, acclaimed cultural historian Peter Gay traces and explores the rise of Modernism in the arts, the cultural movement that heralded and shaped the modern world, dominating western high culture for over a century. He traces the revolutionary path of modernism from its Parisian origins to its emergence as the dominant cultural movement in world capitals such as Berlin and New York, presenting along the way a thrilling pageant of hereitcs that includes Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Walter Gropius and Any Warhol. The result is a work unique in its breadth and brilliance. Lavishly illustrated, Modernism is a superb achievement by one of our greatest historians.

Reviews

Beautifully written, wide-ranging and psychologically acute, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy is a celebration of the subversive energies that decisively transformed art and culture in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At once bracingly intelligent and elegiac, Gay's magisterial book is richly rewarding for anyone who wants to understand the fractured world we have all inherited -- Stephen Greenblatt
Superbly researched and well recounted. The extent to which many [modernists] "sold out" to their wealthy patrons, adopting the values they once scorned, makes for some engrossing reading * Scotsman *
Highly readable, well-illustrated...an intelligent and exciting account of creative individuals and the times in which they worked... An enormous achievement * New Statesman *
An exhaustive and lively summary -- James Urquhart * Financial Times *
Written... with a polymathematical verve which carried me with him to the end -- Nicholas Bagnall * Sunday Telegraph *

Author Bio

Peter Gay is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including the National Book Award winner, The Enlightenment, the best-selling Weimar Culture, and the widely translated Freud- A Life for Our Time.