New races, new media : the struggle for a modern American art, 1890-1925

American modernism was formulated at the turn of the twentieth century, when artists and intellectuals became newly self-conscious of their aesthetic strategies in a rapidly urbanizing United States. During that same period, new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe poured into the U.S., native-born black and white Americans undertook internal migrations to northern cities, and advances in the technology of image making - photography, film, and even improvements in the graphic reproduction of caricature in newspapers - provoked uncertainty in the art world. This dissertation explores the intersections of these two trajectories in period artworks and debates about artistic medium, examining how notions of America as a diverse nation operated at an aesthetic and a cultural level.The immigrant critics and practitioners at the center of my study - Japanese-German critic Sadakichi Hartmann, Mexican-born artist Marius De Zayas, and English-Sri Lankan curator Ananda K. Coomaraswamy - each formed conflicted partnerships with the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz. These allies attacked America's homogeneous arts, positioning themselves as critical hybrid outsiders, and identifying marginal media as means by which to devise and theorize a new art in the U.S. This dissertation examines three episodes in their formulation of American modernism, arguing that each aesthetic breakthrough informed and was informed by a double debate: one occurring in the political and cultural sphere, and a parallel discourse about artistic media themselves.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Kroiz, Lauren

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Caroline A. Jones.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45940

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/45940