| Four Metaphors of Modernism: From Der Sturm to the Société Anonyme Exploring the significance of metaphor in modern art Jenny Anger traces Walden's aesthetic and intellectual roots to Franz Liszt and Friedrich Nietzsche--forebears who led him to embrace a literal and figurative mixing of the arts. She then places Der Sturm in conversation with New York's Société Anonyme (1920-1950), an American avant-garde group modeled on Der Sturm and founded by Katherine Sophie Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray. Working against the tendency to examine artworks and artist groups in isolation, Anger underscores the significance of both organizations to the development and circulation of international modernism. Focusing on the recurring metaphors of piano, glass, water, and home, Four Metaphors of Modernism interweaves a historical analysis of these two prominent organizations with an aesthetic analysis of the metaphors that shaped their practices, reconceiving modernism itself. Presented here is a modernism that is embodied, gendered, multisensory, and deeply committed to metaphor and a restoration of abstraction's connection with the real. Jenny Anger is professor of art history at Grinnell College. She is author of Paul Klee and the Decorative in Modern Art . |