Greg Barnhisel
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162302
- eISBN:
- 9780231538626
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162302.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter focuses on Perspectives USA, a magazine published from 1952 to 1956 by the Ford Foundation-funded nonprofit organization Intercultural Publications and edited by James Laughlin (founder ...
More
This chapter focuses on Perspectives USA, a magazine published from 1952 to 1956 by the Ford Foundation-funded nonprofit organization Intercultural Publications and edited by James Laughlin (founder of New Directions Books and the most important publisher of modernist literature in America). The magazine sought to present the spectrum of American modernism across the genres, from literature to painting to architecture to product design, through original features and reprinted pieces. Laughlin showcased the great achievements in American art of the previous decades to persuade skeptical European audiences that the United States indeed had an advanced artistic scene worthy of respect. Even more than Encounter, Perspectives formalized modernism, voiding it of content and presenting it as a style common to experimental poetry and kitchenware design, abstract expressionist painting, and residential architecture.Less
This chapter focuses on Perspectives USA, a magazine published from 1952 to 1956 by the Ford Foundation-funded nonprofit organization Intercultural Publications and edited by James Laughlin (founder of New Directions Books and the most important publisher of modernist literature in America). The magazine sought to present the spectrum of American modernism across the genres, from literature to painting to architecture to product design, through original features and reprinted pieces. Laughlin showcased the great achievements in American art of the previous decades to persuade skeptical European audiences that the United States indeed had an advanced artistic scene worthy of respect. Even more than Encounter, Perspectives formalized modernism, voiding it of content and presenting it as a style common to experimental poetry and kitchenware design, abstract expressionist painting, and residential architecture.
David Colander and Craig Freedman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691179209
- eISBN:
- 9780691184050
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691179209.003.0003
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Business History
This chapter traces the beginning of economics at the University of Chicago to study the development of a Chicago tradition. The Chicago tradition begins with James Laughlin, the first chair and ...
More
This chapter traces the beginning of economics at the University of Chicago to study the development of a Chicago tradition. The Chicago tradition begins with James Laughlin, the first chair and founder of the department in 1892. He put his stamp on Chicago economics in ways that would serve to nurture future generations but would also prove to be regrettable. Laughlin, during his sometimes-controversial career, placed himself well within the boundaries defining Classical Liberalism. He helped create the persistent, but at times quite misleading, appearance that identified the Chicago department as a virulent breeding ground of ultra-conservative thought, tarred by a predilection for ideologically tinged policy prescriptions. The chapter then looks at the Chicago School of Economics.Less
This chapter traces the beginning of economics at the University of Chicago to study the development of a Chicago tradition. The Chicago tradition begins with James Laughlin, the first chair and founder of the department in 1892. He put his stamp on Chicago economics in ways that would serve to nurture future generations but would also prove to be regrettable. Laughlin, during his sometimes-controversial career, placed himself well within the boundaries defining Classical Liberalism. He helped create the persistent, but at times quite misleading, appearance that identified the Chicago department as a virulent breeding ground of ultra-conservative thought, tarred by a predilection for ideologically tinged policy prescriptions. The chapter then looks at the Chicago School of Economics.
Greg Barnhisel
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162302
- eISBN:
- 9780231538626
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162302.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book reveals how the U.S. government reconfigured modernism as a trans-Atlantic movement, a joint endeavor between American and European artists, and shows that this had profound implications ...
More
This book reveals how the U.S. government reconfigured modernism as a trans-Atlantic movement, a joint endeavor between American and European artists, and shows that this had profound implications for the art that followed and for the character of American identity. It draws on interviews, rare archival materials, and the stories of such figures and institutions as William Faulkner, Stephen Spender, Irving Kristol, James Laughlin, and the Voice of America. The book starts by showing how European intellectuals in the 1950s dismissed American culture as nothing more than cowboy movies and the A-bomb. It then details how American cultural diplomats tried to show that the United States had something to offer beyond military might and commercial exploitation. It shows how they deployed the revolutionary aesthetics of modernism to prove—particularly to the leftists whose Cold War loyalties they hoped to secure—that American art and literature were aesthetically rich and culturally significant. The book argues that, by repurposing modernism, American diplomats and cultural authorities turned the avant-garde into the establishment. It shows how they remade the once revolutionary movement into a content-free collection of artistic techniques and styles suitable for middlebrow consumption. It also documents how the CIA, the State Department, and private cultural diplomats transformed modernist art and literature into pro-Western propaganda during the first decade of the Cold War.Less
This book reveals how the U.S. government reconfigured modernism as a trans-Atlantic movement, a joint endeavor between American and European artists, and shows that this had profound implications for the art that followed and for the character of American identity. It draws on interviews, rare archival materials, and the stories of such figures and institutions as William Faulkner, Stephen Spender, Irving Kristol, James Laughlin, and the Voice of America. The book starts by showing how European intellectuals in the 1950s dismissed American culture as nothing more than cowboy movies and the A-bomb. It then details how American cultural diplomats tried to show that the United States had something to offer beyond military might and commercial exploitation. It shows how they deployed the revolutionary aesthetics of modernism to prove—particularly to the leftists whose Cold War loyalties they hoped to secure—that American art and literature were aesthetically rich and culturally significant. The book argues that, by repurposing modernism, American diplomats and cultural authorities turned the avant-garde into the establishment. It shows how they remade the once revolutionary movement into a content-free collection of artistic techniques and styles suitable for middlebrow consumption. It also documents how the CIA, the State Department, and private cultural diplomats transformed modernist art and literature into pro-Western propaganda during the first decade of the Cold War.
