Ethnic Modernism, 1910-1950

Abstract

African Americans, European immigrants, and members of other minority groups were, as immigrants and ethnics, part of modernity, as they lived through experiences of migration, ethnic identification, and often, alienation. In many ways, they also participated in, and significantly advanced, the course of modernism in the US; Afro-American artists, including Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker, were central to the development of the new American music; modern composers Arnold Schdnberg and Kurt Weill escaped to America from fascist Europe; immigrant artists like Joseph Stella, Max Weber, Ben Shahn, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp helped to establish modernist art; European exiles like Josef Albers were prominently active in such institutions as Black Mountain College while Hans Hoffmann taught the principles of modernist art and abstract expressionism in New York. Important modern art collectors and curators like Leo Stein, Etta Cone, and Juliana Force were the children or grandchildren of immigrants. participation of these immigrants, children of immigrants, exiles, and African Americans among other marginalized groups helped make possible the breakthrough of modernism and its ultimate acceptance as truly American. Looking back at modernism, Harry Levin marveled at the fact that The Picasso could have become the name of a New