Modernist Magazines

"An Art That Won't Behave": Film and the Seven Arts, 1907-1921

by Michael Devine

American Literature 84.1 (March 2012): 89-117

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to... more In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to transform the cinema into an indigenous art free from European influence. Precisely because the cinema was “an art that won't behave,” as the journal's first essay on film put it, it depended on the arts as tutor texts in the effort to restrain sensory disorder and reinvigorate communal life. Wholly absent from critical treatments that see film as a model for the most kinetic modernist practices, the journal provides entry to a richly interdisciplinary history of American cinema: in the critical writings and poetry of the journal's contributors, including James Oppenheim, Waldo Frank, Vachel Lindsay, Stephen Vincent Benét, and Babette Deutsch, and in the works of artists close to the journal—John Sloan's painting Movies, Five Cents (1907) and Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's abstract film Manhatta (1921). Imagined as a shelter from the most dispiriting forces of urban-industrial modernity, the cinema was at once embraced, challenged, and idealized by these artists who practiced what Wanda Corn has called a “transcendent modernism.”

‘Enemies of Cant: The Athenaeum and The Adelphi’

by Michael Whitworth

The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Volume I: Britain and Ireland 1880-1955, ed. Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.  364-388. 

An attempt to trace the literary and social outlooks which framed John Middleton Murry's literary journals The... more An attempt to trace the literary and social outlooks which framed John Middleton Murry's literary journals The Athenaeum (which he edited from April 1919 to February 1921), and The Adelphi (which he founded in 1923), and the financial arrangements of ownership, subsidy, and patronage which sustained them.

A Castle of One’s Own: Interactivity in Chatelaine Magazine, 1928-35

by Jaleen Grove

This paper published in the Fall 2011 issue of the Journal of Canadian Studies, and is available from academic journal databases.

Chatelaine promoted maternal feminism with a variety of illustrated content and with mixed results. Hand-drawn imagery... more Chatelaine promoted maternal feminism with a variety of illustrated content and with mixed results. Hand-drawn imagery in 1928 connoted both individual expression and col- lective national identity. Readers’ material interaction with illustration developed their self- direction, critical judgement, and creativity in how they received editorial, advertising, and aesthetic messages. This made the magazine popular and gave it counterpublic potential. Unfortunately, Chatelaine—an important employer of women at first—replaced much of the illustration by female artists with men’s work and generic photographs after 1932. Ironically, Chatelaine’s celebration of essentialized femininity in pictures and other texts contributed to the exclusion of women from “masculine” illustration jobs, even as such imagery also brought women together in solidarity.

La revue Châtelaine célébrait le féminisme maternel avec un contenu illustré varié. Les résultats ont toutefois été mixtes. Les images dessinées à la main en 1928 représentaient l’expression individuelle ainsi que l’identité nationale collective. L’interaction du matériel de lecture avec les illustrations a aidé les lectrices à développer leur autodétermination, leur jugement critique et leur créativité en assimilant l’article rédactionnel, la publicité et les messages esthétiques. Ceci a rendu la revue populaire et lui a donné un potentiel con- trepublic. Malheureusement, Châtelaine – un employeur important de femmes à ses débuts – remplaça beaucoup de ses illustrations réalisées par des artistes féminines par des œuvres masculines et des photos génériques après 1932. Il est donc ironique que la célébration de la féminité essentialisée de Châtelaine dans ses images et ses textes ait contribué à l’exclusion des femmes dans les emplois demandant des illustrations « masculines », alors même qu’elle regroupait les femmes dans une vague de solidarité.

СССР на стройке: журнал и его читатель (USSR in Construction: The Magazine and Its Reader)

by Erika Wolf

Published in: СССР на стройке: Журнал нового типа [USSR in Construction: A Magazine of a New Type]. Edited by Egor Larichev, 11-25. Moscow: Agey Tomesh, 2006.

SSSR na stroike: From Constructivist Visions to Construction Sites."

by Erika Wolf

Published in: USSR in Construction: An Illustrated Exhibition Magazine, ed. Petter Osterlund, n.p. Fotomuseet Sundsvall, Sundsvall, Sweden, 2006.

When Photographs Speak, To Whom Do They Talk? The Origins and Audience of SSSR na stroike (USSR in Construction)

by Erika Wolf

Left History 6, no. 2 (2000): 53-82.

The Visual Economy of Forced Labor: Alexander Rodchenko and the White Sea-Baltic Canal

by Erika Wolf

In the anthology: Picturing Russia: Essays on Visual Evidence. Edited by Valerie Kivelson and Joan Neuberger, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Pages 168-174.