Seizing the Light, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER ELEVEN The New Culture of Light

 

 

 

TEACHING MODERNISM: THE AMERICAN IMPULSE

The chaos and mass destruction in post-World War I Europe gave America the opportunity to assume a leadership role as a global cultural and economic center. Although another major war would be fought before the American art world would become the “center” persuasively, between the end of World War I in 1918 and the start of World War II in 1939 Americans took on an active role in shaping Western photographic practice. Many intellectuals of the time did not recognize the aesthetic accomplishments of America’s indigenous populations, and therefore perceived the country as having no artistic history to rival the cathedrals, frescoes, and monumental sculptures ...