Description

pp. 246, contains 80 photographs and 42 full-color illustrations. dustjacket wrapped in protective Bro-dart covering. “Appel champions the restorative, uplifting forces found in the works of such twentieth-century artists as Matisse, Paul Klee, Walker Evans, Joyce, Chagall, Stravinsky, Nabokov, Russell Lee, Leger, Milhaud (some of whom came to America to escape Hitler and quickly caught the native upbeat beat)… Their works have often portrayed the commonplace : cars, gasoline stations, roadside diners, electric signs, movies, radios, skyscrapers… celebrating – even through war in Europe and depression at home – the advances in technology, the new look of the cities… Appel discusses how their art stimulates and quickens the pulse, and how – with its folk images of the new, willed ‘primitivism,’ in part inspired by the tribal art of Africa and Oceania – it projects optimism, humour, energy. Full of ideas and brilliant critical insights, this is a book at once idiosyncratic, authoritative, and fun to look at and to read.”