The avant-garde in interwar England

by Michael T. Saler

The Avant-Garde in Interwar England addresses modernism's ties to tradition, commerce, nationalism, and spirituality through an analysis of the assimilation of visual modernism in England between 1910 and 1939. During this period, a debate raged across the nation concerning the purpose of art in society. On one side were the aesthetic formalists, led by members of London's Bloomsbury Group, who thought art was autonomous from everyday life. On the other were England's so-called medieval modernists, many of them from the provincial North, who maintained that art had direct social functions and moral consequences. As Michael T. Saler demonstrates in this volume, the heated exchange between these two camps would ultimately set the terms for how modern art was perceived by the British public. The Avant-Garde in Interwar England will appeal to students of modernism, twentieth-century art, the cultural history of England, and urban history.