Us Modernism at Continents End: Carmel, Provincetown, Taos

This book explores the little art communities and their aesthetic products in the early twentieth century, historicizing and theorizing their role and function as geo-social formations. It offers new readings of major authors associated with these sites and challenges a center-periphery model of modernist activity and literary-aesthetic production, emphasizing a network-based, collaborative model.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 31 August 2020
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Exploring the little art communities and their aesthetic products in the early twentieth century, this book historicizes and theorizes the role and function of the little art community as a geo-social formation. It presents a comparative, place-based study of three semiperipheral (non-metropolitan) sites: Carmel, Provincetown, and Taos. Through new readings of major authors such as Robinson Jeffers, Eugene O'Neill, and D.H. Lawrence, the book challenges a center-periphery model of modernist activity and literary-aesthetic production and instead emphasizes a network-based, collaborative model.

The book is the first to historicise and theorise the significance of the early twentieth-century little art colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production. Alongside a historical overview of the emergence of three critical sites of modernist activity - the little art colonies of Carmel, Provincetown, and Taos - the book offers new critical readings of major authors associated with those places. Geneva M. Gano tracks the radical thought and aesthetic innovation that emerged from these villages, revealing a surprisingly dynamic circulation of persons, objects, and ideas between the country and the city and producing modernisms that were cosmopolitan in character yet also site-specific.

The book explores the little art communities and their aesthetic products in the early twentieth century, historicizing and theorizing the role and function of the little art community as a geo-social formation. It presents a comparative, place-based study of three semiperipheral (non-metropolitan) sites: Carmel, Provincetown, and Taos. Through new readings of major authors such as Robinson Jeffers, Eugene O'Neill, and D.H. Lawrence, the book challenges a center-periphery model of modernist activity and literary-aesthetic production and instead emphasizes a network-based, collaborative model.

The book is the first to historicise and theorise the significance of the early twentieth-century little art colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production. Alongside a historical overview of the emergence of three critical sites of modernist activity - the little art colonies of Carmel, Provincetown, and Taos - the book offers new critical readings of major authors associated with those places. Geneva M. Gano tracks the radical thought and aesthetic innovation that emerged from these villages, revealing a surprisingly dynamic circulation of persons, objects, and ideas between the country and the city and producing modernisms that were cosmopolitan in character yet also site-specific.

Weight: 506g
Dimension: 144 x 222 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474439756