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History 20th Century

The Pulse of Modernism

Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siècle Europe

by (author) Robert Michael Brain

Publisher
University of Washington Press
Initial publish date
Mar 2015
Category
20th Century, Modern (late 19th Century to 1945)
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780295993201
    Publish Date
    Mar 2015
    List Price
    $143.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780295993218
    Publish Date
    Oct 2016
    List Price
    $48.00

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Description

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.

About the author

Contributor Notes

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

Editorial Reviews

"[A] highly creative endeavour in the cultural history of science and aesthetics which provides a compelling account of the inspiration which various early practitioners of the modernist movement drew from the physiological laboratories of the nineteenth century. For historians working at the intersection between science and art it is essential reading, whilst historians of science, technology and medicine more medicine more generally can draw inspiration from this approach just as artists in the late nineteenth century looked outside the conventional boundaries of their practice to inform new directions of experimentation in the studio."

The British Journal for the History of Science

"The Pulse of Modernism is richly informed by scholarship in art history, history of science, and social studies of science. Its synthesis of wide-ranging philosophical and scientific matters makes for intensive reading, yet readers are generously rewarded with exquisite descriptions of laboratory techniques, scientific discoveries, and works of art."

Journal of Modern History