Examining the extraordinary influence of Darwins theory of evolution on French thought from 1875 to 1910; Rae Beth Gordon argues for a reconsideration of modernism both in time and in place that situates its beginnings in the French cafeacute;-concert aesthetic. Gordon weaves the history of medical science; ethnology; and popular culture into a groundbreaking exploration of the cultural implications of gesture in dance performances at late-nineteenth-century Parisian cafeacute;-concerts and music halls. While art historians have studied the ties between primitivism and modernism; their convergence in fin-de-siegrave;cle popular entertainment has been largely overlooked. Gordon argues that while the impact of Darwinism was unprecedented in science; it was no less present in popular culture through the popular press and popular entertainment; where it constituted a kind of "evolutionist aesthetic" on display in the cafeacute;-concert; circus; and music-hall as well as in the spectators reception of the representations on the stage. Modernity in these sites; Gordon contends; was composed by the convergence of contemporary medical theory with representations of the primitive; staged in entertainments that ranged from the can-can; Missing Links; and epileptic singers to the Cake-Walk. Her anthropology of gesture uncovers in these dislocations of the human form an aesthetic of disorder a half century before the eruptions of Dada and Surrealism.
2016-12-16 2016-12-16File Name: B01MXZMB0X
Review
