Twentieth-Century America: The Intellectual and Cultural Context

467 Pages·1991·11.02 MB·English

by  Douglas Tallack

Twentieth-Century America
The Intellectual and Cultural Context
Longman Literature in English Series
General Editors: David Carroll and Michael Wheeler
Lancaster University
For a complete list of titles see pages xii-xiii
T wentieth-Century
America
THE INTELLECTUAL AND
CULTURAL CONTEXT
Douglas Tallack
O Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1991 by Longman Group Limited
Third impression 1996
Published 2013 by Routledge
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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-49455-8 (pbk)
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Tallack, Douglas
Twentieth-century America : the intellectual and cultural
context. - (Longman literature in English series).
1. United States. Cultural processes
I. Title
306.0973
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Tallack, Douglas,
Twentieth-century America : the intellectual and cultural context
/ Douglas Tallack.
p. cm. — (Longman literature in English series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-49454—0. — ISBN 0-582-49455-9 (pbk.)
1. United States—Intellectual life—20th century. 2. Arts,
American. 3. Arts, Modem—20th century—United States.
4. Politics and culture—United States—Ffistory—20th century.
I. Title. II. Series.
E169.1.T254 1991
973.9 — dc20 90-41577
CIP
Contents
List of Plates ix
Acknowledgements x
Editors’ Preface xi
Longman Literature in English Series xii
Author’s Preface xiv
Introduction: Modernity 1
The American century 1
Culture and communications in Middletown 4
The iron cage of capitalism 10
Inspire, educate and entertain: the dissemination of mass
culture 17
The society of the spectacle 23
PART ONE: THE POLITICS OF CULTURE 35
1 Cinema 37
The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction 37
We didn’t know what we were doing: realism and modernism
in the silent cinema, 1890s to 1920s 38
Variety: Hollywood and genre 44
We’re nearly in the real world: the coming of sound 50
The maturity of a style: classical Hollywood cinema,
1930s to 1950s 52
A somewhat rebellious frame of mind: challenges to the
classical style, 1940s to 1960s 60
A nomHollywood Hollywood, 1960s to 1980s 64
More variety: Vietnam and beyond 71
vi CONTENTS
2 Painting 78
Port of New York: realism and modernism in American
painting, c. 1900 to 1929 78
Some downtown stuff: modernism and the city, 1910 to
1930 83
Duchamp’s Fountain: New York Dada, 1917 to 1930 90
Much more derivative than it seems at first glance: Social
Realism and American Scene painting in the Depression 91
American painting: Edward Hopper and Stuart Davis 94
The tradition of the new: Abstract Expressionism,
1940s to 1960s 97
Has modernism failed?: 1950s to 1980s 105
3 Architecture 114
Architecture at the crossroads 114
Starting from zero: the International Style, 1930s to 1970s 115
Into the ‘ibid’ thickets: the Chicago School, 1880s to 1920s 118
Space, time and architecture: the skyscraper in the 1930s 123
Standards of living in anew mode of living:
Frank Lloyd Wright 126
The need for a new monumentality: a coda to the
International Style, 1940s to 1970s 129
Less is a bore: post-modernism, 1960s to 1980s 131
Mall time 136
The critical present 139
PART TWO: THE CULTURE OF POLITICS 145
4 From Victorianism to Modernism 147
Progressivism, Pragmatism and the search for order,
c. 1890 to 1917 147
The first years of our time: the pre-war intellectual rebellion,
1908 to 1917 152
Twilight of idols: Randolph Bourne 158
A revolutionary and not a reform magazine: the Masses,
1912 to 1918 163
Exile’s return: the post-war intellectual rebellion 165
Tell about the South: modernity and anti-modernity in the
Southern tradition, 1920s to 1940s 168
The red decade: the 1930s 176
Individualism, old and new: John Dewey in the 1930s 178
CONTENTS vii
5 From the Old Left to the New Left 183
Communism is twentieth-century Americanism:
the Popular Front, 1935 to 1939 183
The fate of the left: Partisan Review in the 1930s 184
The failure of nerve: the culture of the Cold War 190
The middle of the journey: the New York Intellectuals in the
1940s and 1950s 193
An end to innocence: Leslie Fiedler, Harold Rosenberg and
the trial of Alger Hiss 198
They are, or until some time ago were, radicals: the New
York Intellectuals in retrospect 202
There IS an alternative to the present: the New Left 205
6 America at mid-century 213
The best years of our lives 213
The calm that settles after all hopes have died:
Hannah Arendt 213
Individualism reconsidered: David Riesman 219
The American political tradition: David Riesman, Daniel Bell,
Reinhold Niebuhr, Lionel Trilling, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,
Daniel Boorstin, and Richard Hofstadter 224
Our theoretical work is indeed utopian: C. Wright Mills 239
A philosophical inquiry into Freud: Herbert Marcuse 243
7 Black Culture and Politics 253
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the
color line 253
Property, economy, education and Christian character:
Booker T. Washington 254
One ever feels his twoness: W.E.B. DuBois 255
I have a dream: Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights
Movement 262
By any means necessary: Malcolm X and black nationalism 269
Exactly one paragraph long: black culture 275
8 Feminism 282
What happened to feminism? 282
The sexuo-economic relation: from Charlotte Perkins Gilman
to Rosie the riveter 282
The problem that has no name: Betty Friedan and NOW,
1960s to 1980s 288
viii CONTENTS
Move on little girl: women’s liberation movements 292
The personal is political: radical feminism Kate Millett,
Shulamith Firestone, Adrienne Rich, and Mary Daly 294
Another coup d’etat among men?: socialist feminism 302
Khomeini frees women and blacks: black feminism 303
Sexual/textual politics: feminism and post-structuralism 306
Conclusion: Post-modernity 311
Modernity and its discontents 311
The triumph of the therapeutic: Philip Rieff 317
Post-modernity: back to the future? 321
Scratching where it does not itch: Richard Rorty 325
A post-modernism of resistance/A post-modernism of
reaction 330
Chronology 335
General Bibliographies 369
(i) Intellectual and Cultural History 369
A. 1890s-1940s 369
B. 1950s-1980s 373
(ii) Black Culture and Politics 378
(iii) Feminism 380
(iv) Cinema 382
(v) Painting 385
(vi) Architecture 387
(vii) Music 389
Individual Authors 391
Notes on biography, major works, and suggested further
reading 391
Index 414
List of Plates
Between pages 126 and 127.
1 George Wesley Bellows, Stag at Sharkey’s (1907)
2 George Wesley Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo (1924)
3 Charles Sheeler, Offices (1922)
4 Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Iris (1926)
5 John Marin, Lower Manhattan (Composing Derived from Top of
Woolworth) (1922)
6 Joseph Stella, Battle of Lights, Coney Island (1913)
7 Grant Wood, Stone City, Iowa (1930)
8 Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942)
9 Willem de Kooning, Woman I (1950-52)
10 Jackson Pollock, Mural (1943)
11 Barnett Newman, Adam (1951-52)
12 Andy Warhol, Marilyn (1962)
13 Barbara Kruger, Untitled Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face
(1981)
14 Mies Van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, Seagram building,
New York City (photographer V. Bennett)
15 Daniel Burnham and John Root, Monadnock building, Chicago
(photographer H. T. Cadbury-Brown)
16 Louis Sullivan, Carson Pirie Scott store, Chicago (photographer
R. McCabe)
17 Adolf Meyer and Walter Gropius, Design for the Chicago Tribune
competition, 1922
18 Cass Gilbert, Woolworth Tower, New York City (photographer
A. Higgott)
19 Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin building, Buffalo, New York
20 Frank Lloyd Wright, Frederick C. Robie house, Chicago
(photographer A. Minchim)
21 Michael Graves, Public Services building, Portland/Oregon
(photographer Tom Clark)
22 Susan Griggs, American Sign (photographer George Hall)
23 SITE, Indeterminate Facade Showroom, Houston, Texas