The Pulse of Modernism

Robert Brain traces the origins of artistic modernism to specific technologies of perception developed in late-nineteenth-century laboratories. Brain argues that the thriving fin-de-siècle field of "physiological aesthetics," which sought physiological explanations for the capacity to appreciate beauty and art, changed the way poets, artists, and musicians worked and brought a dramatic transformation to the idea of art itself.

Auteur

Robert Michael Brain is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia.

Contenu

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: Experimentalizing Life

1. Representation on the Line

2. The Vibratory Organism

3. Visible Speech

Part 2: Experimentalizing Art

4. Algorithms of Pleasure

5. Liberating Verse

6. Sensory Fusion

7. Art for Life's Sake

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index