Exploring the notion of tactility in dada and surrealism

First published in 2003 Consuming the Past covers pilgrimages to popular festivals, from modern spectacles to advertising, from the work of avant-garde painters to the novels of Emile Zola, and explores the complexity of the fin-de-siècle French fascination with the Middle Ages. The authors map the cultural history of the period from the end of the Franco-Prussian war to the 1905 separation of Church and State illuminating the powerful appeal that the medieval past held for a society undergoing the rapid changes of industrialisation.

One of the goals of Modernism was the presentation of the essence of art, or pure form. Encouraged by theorists, modern artists found pure form in ornament which, though promising, was sullied by connotations of materiality, domesticity, and femininity. Jenny Anger demonstrates that the decorative significantly informed Paul Klee's art. She compares his work to that of another major modernist, Henri Matisse, to confirm the critical role of the decorative in Modernism. Anger also explores the relevance of the decorative for contemporary and, especially, women artists.