Field Reports | Modernism / Modernity Print+

Contributors

Fielding Questions

Christopher Bush

The study of literary modernism has expanded so dramatically over the past few decades that I’ve heard more than one colleague ask in exasperation, “Well, then, what isn’t modernism?” As Stephen Colbert might ask: is this a great...

Dogs, Chickens, and Pig Shit

Carlos Rojas

It has been between 15,000 and 30,000 years since dogs began living with humans, and although it is appealing to imagine that it was humans who originally domesticated man’s best friend, it is actually more likely that the ancestors of modern...

Between “Invisible Man” and “After the Fall”

Kate Baldwin

When race is pictured historically, it often is removed from leftist radicalism. (Ellison’s novel Invisible Man is about Harlem in the 1930s, a decade when even middle of the road intellectuals were at their most socialist.) Likewise,...

Surviving Fascism? “Art and Liberty” in Egypt, 1938-1948

Anneka Lenssen

“Well this exhibition feels a little too timely,” my colleague Clare Davies posted to Facebook during a November 21, 2016 visit to Art et liberté: Rupture, guerre et surréalisme en Egypte (1938-1948) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in...

Thick Time: William Kentridge, Peripheral Modernisms, and the Politics of Refusal

Andrew van der Vlies

In the final room of Thick Time , the William Kentridge show recently on at the Whitechapel Gallery in London , viewers encountered yet another of the installation environments those familiar with the South African artist’s work have...

Whither Politics? Photography and Protest in the “Provoke Era”

Patrick Noonan

When the photography exhibit Provoke: Photography in Japan between Protest and Performance, 1960-1975 began its tour of Europe and the United States in January of 2016, its relevance to the contemporary moment was unclear.

The Arrested Flight of Surreality: The Belgrade Surrealist Circle (Field Report with Invitation)

Sanja Bahun

Cushioned in an archival box in the Museum of Applied Arts, Belgrade, Serbia , lies a remarkable surrealist photograph: Nikola Vučo ’s The Arrested Flight of Surreality ( Zadržano bekstvo nadstvarnosti , 1929, fig. 1). Posing as...

Cinema and the Invention of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s Capital of the Twentieth Century

Maite Conde

Turn-of-the-century Rio de Janeiro: this period was a time of radical changes for what was then Brazil’s capital. These changes intended to make the city Brazil’s “capital of the twentieth century” (to paraphrase Walter Benjamin). Rio’s...

Hurricane Over the Expanded Field

Rachel Price

Three recent New York exhibitions highlight Latin American and Caribbean culture, crossing contemporary art and anthropology: Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art (Whitney Museum of American Art, July...

A Case for “Site-Activated” Modernism: Elmina Asafo Aesthetics

Jeanne-Marie Jackson

Those of us who work in traditions considered “global” within US and, to varying degrees, European academies are often pulled in two professional directions. On the one hand, many of us feel rightly accountable to a kind of work most welcome in...

Do Look Down: Surveying the Field from Aotearoa/New Zealand

Jacob Edmond

Fig. 1. Hirini Melbourne (1949-2003). Photograph courtesy of the University of Waikato.

What is this thing called modernist studies ? And what does it look like when viewed from the—for most—faraway islands of Aotearoa/New Zealand?...

Modernism after Modernism

Jeanne-Marie Jackson

In the introduction to his superb book Realism after Modernism , Devin Fore describes a “shared modernist aspiration to achieve conditions of perception and consciousness outside of what is customarily arrogated to the human.” [1] He...

Modernism’s Hauntological Architecture: A View from South Africa

Simon van Schalkwyk

The specter of modernism has haunted South African culture for quite some time. In Katharine Kilalea’s recent novel, O.K. Mr. Field (2018), it takes the form of “the House for the Study of Water,” a replica of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye...

Field Reports

Mar 2, 2016 By: Jeanne-Marie Jackson

Tags:

global modernism

“Field Reports” will offer lively and timely introductions to important aspects of modernisms from a wide range of languages, nations, and regions. Aimed at a non-specialist audience, they might introduce a newly discovered archive, a recent cluster of groundbreaking articles or books, an exhibition visited, or a major translation. If you have long thought the journal’s readers should know more about Greek surrealism, estridentismo, or the Bengali or Harlem Renaissances, this is a place to start. Readers who would like to see a particular topic discussed or who are interested in contributing can post comments or write directly to c-bush@northwstern.edu.