Chicago and the Making of American Modernism is the first full-length study of the vexed relationship between America's great modernist writers and the nation's “second city.” Michelle E. Moore explores the ways in which the defining writers of the era-Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald-engaged with the city and reacted against the commercial styles of "Chicago realism" to pursue their own, European-influenced mode of modernist art. Drawing on local archives to illuminate the literary culture of early 20th-century Chicago, this book reveals an important new dimension to the rise of American modernism.

Modernist art often seems to give more frustration than pleasure to its audience. Daniel Albright shows that this perception arises partly because we usually consider each art form in isolation, rather than collaboration.

Smith reveals how this visual revolution played an instrumental role in the complex psychological, social, economic, and technological changes that came to be known as the second industrial revolution. From the role of visualization in the invention of the assembly line, to office and building design, to the corporate and lifestyle images that filled new magazines such as Life and Fortune, he traces the extent to which the second wave of industrialization engaged the visual arts to project a new iconology of progress.

Chicago’s fine arts have long languished in the shadow of the city’s architectural riches, but their time has finally come, most prominently as the focus of the final major exhibition at Chicago’s Terra Museum of American Art. The attendant catalog of the Terra Museum’s fall 2004 exhibition, "Chicago Modern, 1893-1945: Pursuit of the New", is the first-ever survey by a major art museum of early American modernist works created by Chicago artists. At the opening of the twentieth century, Chicago was regarded as the quintessential modern city that would provide fertile soil for a new national art. The debut of impressionism at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 bore early witness to this expectation as it marked the arrival of modern art in Chicago. In the midst of great local controversy, and echoing debates raging at the time in New York and Paris, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago incorporated modernism into its curriculum, a move that led Chicago-trained artists to experiment in and reinterpret the prominent art movements of their time. Here, for the first time, this work is showcased. This volume focuses on the rich body of artistic work produced during the city’s artistic “golden age,” the period from the 1893 Exposition through the end of World War II. Noted art scholars contribute to the volume with essays that explore how Chicago painters created a unique niche in these transformative international art movements—from the impressionism of the 1800s to the social realism and surrealism of the 1930s and 1940s—and forged a regional consciousness through experimental means. This detailed and lavishly illustrated catalog examines the larger issues and concerns that shaped art in Chicago during this period, offering a new and valuable addition to regional American art scholarship and a fitting farewell for one of Chicago’s most beloved art museums. Contributors: Wendy Greenhouse Elizabeth Kennedy Daniel Schulman Susan Weininger

Gwendolyn Wright’s USA is an engaging account the evolution of American architecture, from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first.

A fascinating history of Chicago's innovative and invaluable contributions to American literature and art from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century This remarkable cultural history celebrates the great Midwestern city of Chicago for its centrality to the modernist movement. Author Liesl Olson traces Chicago's cultural development from the 1893 World's Fair through mid-century, illuminating how Chicago writers revolutionized literary forms during the first half of the twentieth century, a period of sweeping aesthetic transformations all over the world. From Harriet Monroe, Carl Sandburg, and Ernest Hemingway to Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olson's enthralling study bridges the gap between two distinct and equally vital Chicago-based artistic "renaissance" moments: the primarily white renaissance of the early teens, and the creative ferment of Bronzeville. Stories of the famous and iconoclastic are interwoven with accounts of lesser-known yet influential figures in Chicago, many of whom were women. Olson argues for the importance of Chicago's editors, bookstore owners, tastemakers, and ordinary citizens who helped nurture Chicago's unique culture of artistic experimentation. Cover art by Lincoln Schatz

Throughout the history of European modernism, philosophers and artists have been fascinated by madness. Something different happened in Brazil, however, with the “art of the insane” that flourished within the modernist movements there. From the 1920s to the 1960s, the direction and creation of art by the mentally ill was actively encouraged by prominent figures in both medicine and art criticism, which led to a much wider appreciation among the curators of major institutions of modern art in Brazil, where pieces are included in important exhibitions and collections. Kaira M. Cabañas shows that at the center of this advocacy stood such significant proponents as psychiatrists Osório César and Nise da Silveira, who championed treatments that included painting and drawing studios; and the art critic Mário Pedrosa, who penned Gestaltist theses on aesthetic response. Cabañas examines the lasting influence of this unique era of Brazilian modernism, and how the afterlife of this “outsider art” continues to raise important questions. How do we respect the experiences of the mad as their work is viewed through the lens of global art? Why is this art reappearing now that definitions of global contemporary art are being contested? Learning from Madness offers an invigorating series of case studies that track the parallels between psychiatric patients’ work in Western Europe and its reception by influential artists there, to an analogous but altogether distinct situation in Brazil.