In Visible Touch: Modernism and Masculinity - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226764125 ISBN 13: 9780226764122

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1998

Synopsis

In this collection, outstanding historians and theorists explore the representation of heterosexual masculinity embodied in modernist art.

Examining such major European modernists as Cézanne, Caillebotte, Matisse, Wyndham Lewis, and Boccioni, these writings offer a history of how artists sought to shape their sexuality in their work. In turn, the essays also show how the artists were shaped by the historical shifts in the gender order and by the exchanges between sexualities occurring in their social worlds. For example, the piece on Wyndham Lewis shows how he subscribed to an exaggerated masculinism, while the essays on Boccioni and Matisse bring out the efforts by these men to understand feminine sexuality.

In the theoretical essays, Bernard Smith questions modernism itself as a style category. And Richard Shiff and W.J.T. Mitchell trace the consequences for art theory of recognizing the physical presence of modernist artworks and the agency of imagery in our encounter with contemporary art.

About this title

About the Author:

Terry Smith is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh. His many books include The Architecture of Aftermath, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0226764125
• ISBN 13: 9780226764122
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 258
• Editor: Smith Terry