Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism (Modern German Culture and Literature Series) - Hardcover

Pan, David

 
9780803237278: Primitive Renaissance: Rethinking German Expressionism (Modern German Culture and Literature Series)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0803237278 ISBN 13: 9780803237278
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2001

Synopsis

Primitive Renaissance argues that the radicality of early-twentieth-century movements such as expressionism was not their modernism but rather their primitivism. At the heart of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Carl Einstein, and others was a critique of modernity through a primitivist aesthetic that privileged art over science and reason. Although drawing on non-European cultural traditions, the new aesthetic was not merely exoticism, an artistic phase or fad that opened a window on the cultural other. It was conceived less as a simple negation of the trappings of civilization than as a more pervasive and structured critique of how life is organized in the modern world. Based on a traditionalist rather than Enlightenment view of the function of art in society, primitivism contended that art provides the core mythic structure for human consciousness. On a broader level, by negating modernity, primitivism also challenged its inevitability. Modernity became one of a number of equally plausible cultural strategies for organizing life in the contemporary world.

 

Ranging insightfully across the visual arts, literature, and philosophy, Primitive Renaissance offers a provocative reassessment of the significance of primitivism and its contribution to the intellectual, artistic, and cultural climate of Europe in the early twentieth century.

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About the Author

David Pan is an acting assistant professor of German at Stanford University.

From the Back Cover

Primitive Renaissance argues that the radicality of early-twentieth-century movements such as expressionism was not their modernism but rather their primitivism. At the heart of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Carl Einstein, and others was a critique of modernity through a primitivist aesthetic that privileged art over science and reason. Although drawing on non-European cultural traditions, the new aesthetic was not merely exoticism, an artistic phase or fad that opened a window on the cultural other. It was conceived less as a simple negation of the trappings of civilization than as a more pervasive and structured critique of how life is organized in the modern world. Based on a traditionalist rather than Enlightenment view of the function of art in society, primitivism contended that art provides the core mythic structure for human consciousness. On a broader level, by negating modernity, primitivism also challenged its inevitability. Modernity became one of a number of equally plausible cultural strategies for organizing life in the contemporary world. Ranging insightfully across the visual arts, literature, and philosophy, Primitive Renaissance offers a provocative reassessment of the significance of primitivism and its contribution to the intellectual, artistic, and cultural climate of Europe in the early twentieth century.

From the Inside Flap

Modern German Culture and Literature series. This series will convey to English-language readers the high accomplishments and deep divisions in modern Germany and Austria. The series will concentrate on the post-unification period (the 1870s and after) and seek to address the wide range of social, artistic, and intellectual confluences that have made German culture diverse, paradigmatic, influential, and sometimes volatile.

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Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
Publication date
2001
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0803237278
ISBN 13 
9780803237278
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
239