Health and happiness in 20th-century avant-garde art

by Donald B. Kuspit

This book presents a refreshing new approach to avant-garde art by demonstrating that a genuine core of modernism manifests a positive, joyful outlook. In contrast to those who see disintegration and negativity as the most authentic artistic responses to this century's gloomy zeitgeist, Donald Kuspit and Lynn Gamwell present twentieth-century art that has emotionally and intellectually affirmed life. Lavishly illustrated, their book includes colorful images of paintings, sculptures, decorative arts for the home, and gardens. In his essay, "Happiness, Health, and Related Anomalies of Avant-Garde Art," Kuspit characterizes most avant-garde art, such as Duchamp's "readymates," as psychologically adolescent - youthfully rebellious, destructive of the past, and emotionally unstable - but singles out certain rare artists, notably Matisse, as being avant-garde in the mature sense of joining a historical tradition, striking a balance between the self's pursuits of happiness and social reality,