Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Intellectual Origins of the Museum of Modern Art

by Kantor, Sybil

• ISBN13: 9780262611961
• ISBN10: 0262611961
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-29
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

Growing up with the twentieth century, Alfred Barr (1902-1981), founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, harnessed the cataclysm that was modernism. In this book-part intellectual biography, part institutional history-Sybil Gordon Kantor tells the story of the rise of modern art in America and of the man responsible for its triumph. Following the trajectory of Barr's career from the 1920s through the 1940s, Kantor penetrates the myths, both positive and negative, that surround Barr and his achievements. Barr fervently believed in an aesthetic based on the intrinsic traits of a work of art and the materials and techniques involved in its creation. Kantor shows how this formalist approach was expressed in the organizational structure of the multidepartmental museum itself, whose collections, exhibitions, and publications all expressed Barr's vision. At the same time, she shows how Barr's ability to reconcile classical objectivity and mythic irrationality allowed him to perceive modernism as an open-ended phenomenon that expanded beyond purist abstract modernism to include surrealist, nationalist, realist, and expressionist art. Drawing on interviews with Barr's contemporaries as well as on Barr's extensive correspondence, Kantor also paints vivid portraits of, among others, Jere Abbott, Katherine Dreier, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Philip Johnson, Lincoln Kirstein, Agnes Mongan, J. B. Neumann, and Paul Sachs.

Author Biography

Sybil Gordon Kantor is an independent scholar living in Columbus, Ohio, and Lugano, Switzerland

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. x
Acknowledgments	p. xiv
Preface	p. xviii
Prologue: Knowing Alfred Barr	p. 2
The Princeton Years	p. 18
Morey as Mentor
Barr and Mather
Barr Moves On to Vassar
Barr's Incipient Interest in Modernism
Harvard versus Princeton
The Fogg Method and Paul J. Sachs: Barr and His Harvard Mentor	p. 36
Norton, the Father of Art History
Kirstein the Student, Ruskin the Critic
Initiation of Formalism at Harvard
The Contribution of Berenson
Professors of the Fogg Method
The Fogg Museum
Sachs, the Associate Director
The Old Boy Network
The Museum Course
Barr Lectures on Modern Art
Barr's Oral Exams
Barr as Teacher, 1925 to 1927	p. 86
First Teaching Job
Barr Proposes the First Course on Modern Art
Barr and J. B. Neumann
An Embarrassing Public Lecture
Vanity Fair as a Source of Modernism
Barr Delivers the First Course in Modernism
Patrons of Modernism
Barr's First Modern Exhibition
The Little Magazine and Modernism at Harvard	p. 122
The Prodigious Lincoln Kirstein
The Expatriates
Hound & Horn
The Dial
Ezra Pound
Malcolm Cowley
Matthew Josephson
Hound & Horn and the Visual
The European Trip	p. 146
Barr Joins the Rebels in Europe
Research in England
Barr and Neumann
Holland, Then Germany
The Bauhaus School
Two Months in Moscow, 1927-1928
Icons
The LEF
Eisenstein
Rodchenko
Kino
VKhUTEMAS
Lissitzky
Tatlin
Leningrad and Beyond
Back at Wellesley
Into the Future
Modernism Takes Its Turn in America	p. 190
Important Precedents
The Harvard Society for Contemporary Art
The Museum of Modern Art Is Launched
The Multimedia Museum
The First Modern Museum Appears in Hartford
Kirstein Renounces Modernism
American Artists Find Their Champion
The Museum Reaches a Milestone
Architecture, Barr, and Henry-Russell Hitchcock	p. 242
Hitchcock the Historian
The Influence of Le Corbusier the Rationalist
Functionalism versus Architecture as Art
Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus
Hitchcock's Writings
Barr's Writings
Hitchcock's Appreciation of Oud
The Russians
Hitchcock's First Magnum Opus
Painting toward Architecture
General Principles of the New Style Established
Barr's Review of Hitchcock's Book
Philip Johnson and Barr: Architecture and Design Enter the Museum	p. 276
Johnson and Barr
Johnson and Hitchcock
Johnson and Mies
The International Style
Style versus Functionalism
The Exhibition and Its Catalogue
Industrial Design
The "Machine Art" Exhibition
The 1938 Bauhaus Exhibition
The Role of Architecture
The Directorship at Full Throttle	p. 314
"Cubism and Abstract Art"
Kahnweiler's Precedent
Barr Paves the Way for Greenberg
The Chart: Modernism in Time and Space
Collision with Meyer Schapiro
Cubism into Architecture
Pluralism
Surrealism
Picasso, 1939
Matisse
Barr's Hidden Agenda
Epilogue	p. 354
Barr's Battle with the Trustees
Fired
Barr's Tenacity
The New Director
Building the Collection
Notes	p. 378
Illustration Credits	p. 460
Index	p. 462
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