United States Modernism and the Genteel Tradition

United States Modernism and the Genteel Tradition

  This thesis suggests to approach United States modernism as an aesthetic project of the contemporary intellectuals and artists to revolt against the reign of the colonialist cultural tradition and ultimately to replace it with what they saw as genuine native culture at the turn of the twentieth century. To argue for the validity of a historical perspective in approaching United States modernism, the thesis examines the formalistic conceptualization of the art movement as pure aestheticism. In doing so, the thesis critically analyzes the shortcomings of the New Critical view and a particular leftist view presented by Andreas Huyssen on the nature of United States modernism. Despite their innate differences in the political inclination, both views commit the same mistake to disregard the existence of the genteel tradition as the preceding art tradition of United States modernism. The genteel tradition, even though primarily characterized by its idealized and Euro-centered view on art, was a cultural project to create a national culture through which the nation could recover its moral purity lost amidst the fast modernization process. United States modernism adopted the most radical experimentalism from European avant-garde arts in the need to surpass the limitation of the genteel tradition in the realm of artistic form. The ultimate goal of United States modernism, however, was, like that of the genteel tradition against which it revolted, to create a viable national culture through which the newly-emerged empire could express its genuine cultural spirit. In this sense, it is necessary to approach United States modernism through a close look at its ambivalent relationship with the genteel tradition in order to overcome the shortcomings of the formalistic approaches.