Modernisms Second Act: A Cultural Narrative [Hardcover]

European modernism underwent a massive change from 1930 to 1960, as war altered the cultural landscape. This account of artists and writers in France and England explores how modernism survived under authoritarianism, whether Fascism, National Socialism, or Stalinism, and how these artists endured by balancing complicity and resistance.1. Art and Occupation 2. Modernist Politics 3. Marketing Modernism

This book explores the connection between experimental aesthetics and reactionary politics through the work of individual artists and writers examining the exchange between modernism and political action linking modernism and authoritarianism in Europe between 1930 and 1960. It links modernism with politics and the possible complicity between forms of political totalitarianism and realignment of the modernist project. Nadel has written a useful and very readable book about an era of modernism that has not hitherto attracted sufficient scholarly curiosity. - Alec Marsh, Muhlenberg College, USA

Ira Nadel is Professor in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of Leonard Cohen: A Life in Art (1994), Double Act: A Life of Tom Stoppard (2000), Ezra Pound: A Literary Life (2004), Joyce and His Publishers (2005), The Cambridge Introduction to Ezra Pound (2007), and David Mamet: A Life in the Theatre (2008). Nadel is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a UBC Distinguished University Scholar, and the winner of the 1996 Medal for Canadian Biography. He has also been awarded a Killam Research Prize, Mellon and Dorot Fellowships at the Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, and a Beinecke Fellowship at Yale University, USA.