Cocteau, Jean (1889–1963)
Jean Cocteau (Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau) was an influential, prolific, multi-talented French artist, writer, critic and filmmaker. He wrote poetry, plays, libretti for ballets,…
Search Results 1 - 25 of 26
Dance
Historically, modern dance scholarship has followed the contours of the field as defined by John Martin, the revered dance critic for The New York Times,…
Fireworks (1947)
Fireworks, Kenneth Anger’s breakthrough short film brought him immediate renown, and acclaim from the likes of Jean Cocteau, upon its debut at the 1949 Festival…
Parade
A one-act ballet on the theme of a fairground sideshow, Parade was produced by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and premiered on May 18, 1917 at…
Honegger, Arthur (1892–1955)
Composer Arthur Honegger was one of a group of six young French composers, known as Les Six, in the forefront of post-WWI Parisian musical modernism.…
Satie, Erik Alfred Leslie (1866–1925)
Erik Satie’s compositions, writings, and humor played an important role in many modernist movements of the twentieth century. Experimenting with simple forms, neoclassicism, mysticism, satire,…
Butts, Mary (1890–1937)
Mary Butts was a well-known and prolific British novelist, essayist, poet, and writer of short stories in her time. First published by Robert McAlmon, Butts…
Genet, Jean (1910-1986)
Jean Genet was a poet, novelist, autobiographer and playwright within the Theatre of the Absurd movement. He wrote licentiously on homosexuals and outlaws, and explosively…
Börlin, Jean (1893–1930)
As principal choreographer and dancer for the 1920s avant-garde troupe Les Ballets Suédois (Swedish Ballet), Jean Börlin contributed greatly to the modernist cauldron that was…
Massine, Léonide (1896–1979)
Russian-born Léonide Massine’s career flourished in the cities of Western Europe, where he made his name as a lead dancer and choreographer for Serge Diaghilev’s…
Klaxon (São Paulo, 1922–1923)
Klaxon (São Paulo, 1922–1923) was the first and most important of Brazil’s avant-garde artistic journals. It comprised a total of nine issues, published on a…
Rite of Spring, The (Le Sacre du Printemps)
The premiere of The Rite of Spring at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris on 29 May 1913 provoked greater storms of controversy than any…
Ballets Suédois (1920–25)
Rolf de Maré’s Ballets Suédois was active from 1920 to 1925. It was the chief artistic rival to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and de Maré was…
Mann, Klaus (1906–1949)
Klaus Heinrich Thomas Mann was born in 1906 into Germany’s most famous family of writers, in which, he would later write, ‘everything has already been…
Laurencin, Marie (1883–1956)
Marie Laurencin was a painter, etcher, lithographer, illustrator, and decorative artist of the Parisian avant-garde in the early twentieth century. She is most widely known…
Fascist Modernism
Fascist modernism is an artistic and literary movement emphasizing extreme nationalism, romantic anti-capitalism, and cultural renewal most closely associated with Fascist Italy, Vichy France, and…
Diaghilev, Serge (1872–1929)
Impresario, critic, curator, and founder-director of the Ballets Russes (1909–1929), Serge Diaghilev was a towering figure and pioneer of early 20th-century modernism. Through his various…
Duchamp, Marcel (1887-1968)
Duchamp was one of the most influential and original artists of the 20th century. He rejected the constraints of painting and believed (both as an…
Teatro de Ulises and Teatro Orientación
Teatro de Ulises and Teatro Orientación were companies founded in Mexico City in the early twentieth century by members of the modernist/avant-garde literary group Contemporáneos.…
Robinson, Jacqueline (1922–2000)
A Franco-British dancer, teacher, choreographer and historian, Jacqueline Robinson is one of the key figures of modern dance in France. Born in London, educated in…
Dance and Writing
The centrality of dance to aesthetic modernism led to dance becoming a major preoccupation of modernist literature and a model for the generation of the…
de Morais Andrade, Mário Raul (1893–1945)
Often called the pope of Brazilian Modernism, Mário de Andrade spearheaded several different phases of the movement, and is credited with introducing the term modernismo…
De Maré, Rolf (1888–1964)
Rolf de Maré was a Swedish-born impresario, art collector, and philanthropist. Born into one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, he began collecting modern art at an…
French New Wave
The French New Wave is a term associated with a group of French filmmakers and the films they directed from the late 1950s until the…
Lifar, Serge (1905–1986)
A crucial figure in the rehabilitation of ballet at the Paris Opéra, Serge Lifar had a glamorous career as a dancer, choreographer, and intellectual in…