The Aging of American Modernism

FAIN: FEL-262057-19

Scott Herring
Trustees of Indiana University (Bloomington, IN 47405-7000)

Completion of a book-length study on American modernism and the late-life work of prominent Avant-garde figures, Djuna Barnes (1892-1882), Tillie Olsen (1912-2007), and Charles Henri Ford (1908-2002); and lesser-known figures, Samuel M. Steward (1909-1993), Ivan Albright (1897-1983) and Mabel Hampton (1902-1989).

“The Aging of American Modernism” is the first book-length study of poetics, fiction, memoirs, paintings, and memorabilia produced by American modernists later in their lives, after the period of modernism is said to have long subsided. Placing modernism in overdue colloquy with the field of age studies, the project surveys experimental artwork crafted by these artists from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. Focusing on luminaries such as Djuna Barnes, Tillie Olsen, and Charles Henri Ford as well as lesser-known figures such as author Samuel Steward, painter Ivan Albright, and performer Mabel Hampton, it revises modernism’s usual timeline and takes seriously vanguard efforts often dismissed as outmoded in the decades following World War II. In so doing, it introduces specialists and general readers to underappreciated endeavors that find aging experimentalists at their imaginative apex during a time of life often considered artistry’s endgame.

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