Music and Dance
The histories of modernist music and dance are vast and inextricably related, so much so that it is as daunting to consider them in tandem…
The histories of modernist music and dance are vast and inextricably related, so much so that it is as daunting to consider them in tandem…
Jacob Glatstein, or Yankev Glatshteyn, was a Polish-born Jewish American poet, novelist, and literary critic who primarily wrote in Yiddish. Glatstein was born in Lublin,…
Jerome Robbins was one of the master choreographers of the twentieth century who transformed musical theater and ballet. Beginning with Fancy Free (1944), Robbins left…
Sigmund (Sigismund Schlomo) Freud was an Austrian psychiatrist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who systematized theories of the unconscious and psychosexual development. Freud published case…
A passionate proponent of modernist arts and letters, publisher and author Margaret Caroline Anderson is best known as the intrepid co-editor (with Jane Heap, 1883–1964)…
Ornette Coleman was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer, considered one of the founders of the avant-garde movement in jazz, which he began performing…
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a philosopher, essayist and literary critic associated with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Frankfurt Institute for Social Research). Initially trained in…
Hollywood of the 1940s and 1950s saw the emergence of ‘film noir’, a cycle of fatalistic crime thrillers, often produced as ‘B’ movies and distinguished…
Florence Mills was a leading African American performer of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Washington, D.C. in the mid-1890s, Mills was raised in Harlem, New…
This entry surveys the history and aesthetics of the city symphony film (or city film). It traces its intellectual and aesthetic origins in the late…
‘Underground’ is a label applied to the outer fringes of the radical film spectrum: films whose form, subject matter, or both, challenge conventional cinematic habits.…
Fantasia is an animated American film produced by Walt Disney. The film consists of eight animated segments, of which ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ is the most…
Born in Fiume to an aristocratic family, Horváth went to school in Budapest and Vienna and studied German literature and theatre in Munich. He left…
Documentaries involve self-conscious reflections on modern life. Early newsreels and actualities displayed film’s capacity to document events and everyday life as they happened, leading viewers…
In the late 1960s, Werner Schroeter taught himself to handle a camera and shot his first shorts on Super 8 and 16 mm that were…
Beauty and the Beast [La Belle et la Bête] is a black-and-white French film directed by Jean Cocteau. Based on the fairy-tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince…
The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is a short experimental film by American filmmaker Kenneth Anger, celebrated for its provocative subject matter, surrealistic editing, and…
Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) is a black and white propaganda film made by German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. The film documents the 1934…
New York stands as a global city today in great part thanks to the landmark collaborations of American modern architect Wallace Kirkman Harrison (1895–1981), whose…
Vertigo is a psychological thriller directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, based on D’entre les morts [The Living and the Dead], a 1954 crime novel…
Edwin Maxwell Fry, architect of modern British design and liberal social theory, brought insight to early 20th century Britain and to the global community. Fry’s…
The Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert i López brought the modernist aesthetics of the Mediterranean to the Charles River, Massachusetts as Director of the Harvard…
This entry describes the history and aesthetic concerns of the Brazilian cinema nôvo movement, active from the 1950s to the 1970s. It discusses some of…
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a revolutionist, socialist, philosopher, journalist and social theorist, best known for his Communist Manifesto, co-written with his friend and collaborator Friedrich…
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907–1973) was an essayist, librettist, anthologist, teacher, and, above all, poet, active in the literary cultures of both Britain (c.1927–1939) and the…