Eccentricity in the History of American Art during the Modernist Period

FAIN: FT-60525-13

Tirza True Latimer
California College of the Arts, Oakland (Oakland, CA 94618-1426)

The book project, Eccentric Modernisms, takes a case study approach to the investigation of modernist misfits who challenged sex/gender codes and racial prohibitions, as well as aesthetic regimes, to cultivate discrepant strains of modernism in America during the 1930s and 1940s. Each of the book's three chapters focuses on a document I regard as a manifesto of "eccentric modernism": a bilingual (French/English) artists' book titled "Dix Portraits" (1930), an opera program from Gertrude Stein's "Four Saints in Three Acts" (1934), and an art journal, "View" (1945). I have completed two of these three studies and seek NEH support to complete the third chapter, which focuses on the 1945 "American Issue" of the journal "View." Several of the protagonists featured in "Dix Portraits" and "Four Saints" reappear in this third chapter as contributors to "View." The journal takes issue with the prevailing ethos of nationalism as well as the formalism that dominates mid-century American Art.

Associated Products

Eccentric Modernisms: Making Differences in the History of American Art (Book)
Title: Eccentric Modernisms: Making Differences in the History of American Art
Author: Tirza True Latimer
Abstract: “What if we ascribe significance to aesthetic and social divergences rather than waving them aside as anomalous? What if we look closely at what does not appear central, or appears peripherally, or does not appear at all, viewing ellipses, outliers, absences, and outtakes as significant?” Eccentric Modernisms places queer demands on art history, tracing the relational networks connecting cosmopolitan eccentrics who cultivated discrepant strains of modernism in America during the 1930s and 1940s. Building on the author's earlier studies of Gertrude Stein and other lesbians who participated in transatlantic cultural exchanges between the world wars, this book moves in a different direction, focusing primarily on the gay men who formed Stein’s support network and whose careers, in turn, she helped to launch, including the neo-romantic painters Pavel Tchelitchew and writer/editor Charles Henri Ford. Eccentric Modernisms shows how these “eccentric modernists” bucked trends by working collectively, reveling in disciplinary promiscuity, and sustaining creative affiliations across national and cultural boundaries. The book is scheduled for release in Dec 2016.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.ucpress.edu/
Primary URL Description: University of California Press website
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: ISBN-10: 05202
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Other Points of View (Exhibition)
Title: Other Points of View
Curator: Tirza True Latimer
Abstract: Other Points of View seeks to examine the context and legacy of the arts journal View, edited by Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler and in circulation from 1940 to 1947. Bringing together over 100 works, the exhibition re-introduces artists and critics, such as Charles Henri Ford, Parker Tyler and Pavel Tchelitchew, and re-contextualizes modernists now considered canonical, such as Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi and Georgia O’Keeffe. Presenting the contributions of surrealists, magic realists, neo-romantics, and self-taught artists from Europe and the Americas, Other Points of View explores how the magazine cultivated alternative understandings of both the qualifier “American” and the term “modernism.” Anchored by magazine covers, paintings, sculptures and photographs, Other Points of View highlights the creative output of the magazine’s contributors, who worked in collaborative arenas including opera, ballet, and theater. One example of this is the exhibition’s presentation of Four Saints in Three Acts, which premiered in 1934 with libretto by Gertrude Stein, score by Virgil Thomson, choreography by Frederick Ashton, décor by Florine Stettheimer, and an all African American chorus directed by Eva Jessye. With an emphasis on ephemeral objects, the exhibition also spotlights the social networks, events and communities that surrounded View, arguing that, through the small exhibitions and lavish opening parties it hosted, the publication was part of New York Bohemia’s social season, thus expanding beyond the boundaries of the printed magazine. In assessing this aspect of the publication, Other Points of View aims to consider how View counterbalanced the progress-based narrative often associated with modernism. Similarly, by surveying the homophilia, anti-racism, and sex-positivity embodied by the magazine, the exhibition addresses the criticism the group of artists attracted, including attacks from Clement Greenberg and André Breton.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http://https://www.leslielohman.org/archive/other-points-of-view
Primary URL Description: Link to Leslie Lohman Museum of Art Archive containing curatorial essay for the exhibition Other Points of View

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