Biocentrism and Modernism

Examining the complex intersections between art and scientific approaches to the natural world, Biocentrism and Modernism reveals another side to the development of Modernism. While many historians have framed this movement as being mechanistic and "against" nature, the essays in this collection illuminate the role that nature-centric ideologies played in late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth-century Modernism. The essays in Biocentrism and Modernism contend that it is no accident that Modernism arose at the same time as the field of modern biology. From nineteenth-century discoveries, to the emergence of the current environmentalist movement during the 1960s, artists, architects, and urban planners have responded to currents in the scientific world. Sections of the volume treat both philosophic worldviews and their applications in theory, historiography, and urban design. This collection also features specific case studies of individual artists, including Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Jackson Pollock.

Oliver A.I. Botar received his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Toronto and is Professor of Art History in the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Canada.

Isabel Wünsche studied Art History and Archaeology in Berlin, Moscow, Heidelberg, and Los Angeles, and completed her Ph.D. dissertation at Heidelberg University. She is Professor of Art and Art History at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany.