Modern Times

A stylish, rigorous documentation of the cross-cultural exchange between America and Europe during the Roaring Twenties

Parallel to the avant-garde movements in Europe of the 1920s, unprecedented economic prosperity developed in the United States. In Europe, "America" became a cultural concept that emblematized an urban lifestyle, efficient labor systems and low-threshold entertainment. Certain exports, such as jazz, were embraced, while others, such as Taylorism, met with heavy criticism. In turn, European art and its new movements, such as Dadaism, Futurism and Constructivism, attracted both reverence and disdain in the United States. The American public learned about these cultural experiments through magazines such as The Little Review.
Through expository texts and reproductions of poems, artwork, posters, sheet music and magazines, Modern Times documents the transatlantic exchange that occurred between the European avant-garde and American popular culture during the storied Roaring Twenties. The volume identifies the means through which ideas and phenomena were disseminated abroad and traces their respective receptions.