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Free as Gods: How the Jazz Age Reinvented Modernism
Among many art, music and literature lovers, particularly devotees of modernism, the expatriate community in France during the Jazz Age represents a remarkable convergence of genius in one place and period―one of the most glorious in history. Drawn by the presence of such avant-garde figures as Joyce and Picasso, artists and writers fled the Prohibition in the United States and revolution in Russia to head for the free-wheeling scene in Paris, where they made contact with rivals, collaborators, and a sophisticated audience of collectors and patrons. The outpouring of boundary-pushing novels, paintings, ballets, music, and design was so profuse that it belies the brevity of the era (1918–1929). Drawing on unpublished albums, drawings, paintings, and manuscripts, Charles A. Riley offers a fresh examination of both canonic and overlooked writers and artists and their works, by revealing them in conversation with one another. He illuminates social interconnections and artistic collaborations among the most famous―Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gershwin, Diaghilev, and Picasso―and goes a step further, setting their work alongside that of African Americans such as Sidney Bechet, Archibald Motley Jr., and Langston Hughes, and women such as Gertrude Stein and Nancy Cunard. Riley’s biographical and interpretive celebration of the many masterpieces of this remarkable group shows how the creative community of postwar Paris supported astounding experiments in content and form that still resonate today.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published June 6, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 7, 2017
The jazz age and the roaring twenties are one and the same and the author gives us a description of the life (mostly in Paris) at that time trough music, literature, arts and architecture. The life of the most important authors, painters and musician as an explanation of what is now called modernism. Interesting and fascinating.
THANKS TO EDELWEISS FOR THE PREVIEW!
THANKS TO EDELWEISS FOR THE PREVIEW!
October 9, 2017
** Full disclosure: I received this book in exchange for an honest review**
One of the treason I requested this book for early review is because I don’t know as much as I would like about the Jazz Age or the Modernist movement and this seemed like a good place to start learning more. Sadly I don’t feel this book was meant for someone like me but was instead meant for someone with a fairly deep knowledge of that time period instead.
Each chapter deals with a main “character”, their history and development as an artist and something of how they influenced the times and arts of the era. The author mostly talked about the expected names, the Fitzgerald’s, Hemmingway, Debussy, though he did also bring up more than a few people I had never heard of before. Unfortunately also a large part of each chapter was taken up with a lot of name dropping, for lack of a better term, each chapter is just full of name after name after name with no real context of whom they are or why I should be aware or care about them. I felt as though it was assumed I would already know who they were and why they mattered…and I almost always didn’t.
I can’t call this a complete waste of my time since I did find a couple of new artists that were discussed but overall it was a slow, slog of a read due to the constant listing of names, and the sections on musicians or dance/choreography were especially hard to get though since I had no reference for what he was talking about at all never having seen or heard the pieces he was talking about.
This book may be more appropriate for someone already well versed in the time period but I would not recommend it for a neophyte or those with a more causal interest in the topic.
One of the treason I requested this book for early review is because I don’t know as much as I would like about the Jazz Age or the Modernist movement and this seemed like a good place to start learning more. Sadly I don’t feel this book was meant for someone like me but was instead meant for someone with a fairly deep knowledge of that time period instead.
Each chapter deals with a main “character”, their history and development as an artist and something of how they influenced the times and arts of the era. The author mostly talked about the expected names, the Fitzgerald’s, Hemmingway, Debussy, though he did also bring up more than a few people I had never heard of before. Unfortunately also a large part of each chapter was taken up with a lot of name dropping, for lack of a better term, each chapter is just full of name after name after name with no real context of whom they are or why I should be aware or care about them. I felt as though it was assumed I would already know who they were and why they mattered…and I almost always didn’t.
I can’t call this a complete waste of my time since I did find a couple of new artists that were discussed but overall it was a slow, slog of a read due to the constant listing of names, and the sections on musicians or dance/choreography were especially hard to get though since I had no reference for what he was talking about at all never having seen or heard the pieces he was talking about.
This book may be more appropriate for someone already well versed in the time period but I would not recommend it for a neophyte or those with a more causal interest in the topic.
September 22, 2017
FREE AS GODS: MODERNISM: HOW THE JAZZ AGE REINVENTED MODERNISM
By Charles Riley
If you are an aficionado of jazz, of writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, of artists like Picasso and other modernists, this book is for you. Riley’s amazing in-depth knowledge of the arts in the decade between WWI and the Depression will astound and delight the reader. He delves into the “cross-pollenization” of all the creative artists living in Paris during this momentous time, and meticulously ties all their influences together. Who knew that jazz music influence ballet, and vice-versa? Or that artists and writers collaborated together and fed each other’s creative impulses? It was a pleasure to read little-known and amusing and heart-wrenching vignettes about favorite writers, musicians, dancers, and artists and their many interactions and achievements. Riley recreates a vibrant world that makes readers wish they, too, could have been in Paris, participating and observing these groundbreaking and lasting artistic accomplishments that have helped to shape our artistic world today. The legacy of those years is truly done justice by Riley’s scholarship and his accessible prose.
By Charles Riley
If you are an aficionado of jazz, of writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, of artists like Picasso and other modernists, this book is for you. Riley’s amazing in-depth knowledge of the arts in the decade between WWI and the Depression will astound and delight the reader. He delves into the “cross-pollenization” of all the creative artists living in Paris during this momentous time, and meticulously ties all their influences together. Who knew that jazz music influence ballet, and vice-versa? Or that artists and writers collaborated together and fed each other’s creative impulses? It was a pleasure to read little-known and amusing and heart-wrenching vignettes about favorite writers, musicians, dancers, and artists and their many interactions and achievements. Riley recreates a vibrant world that makes readers wish they, too, could have been in Paris, participating and observing these groundbreaking and lasting artistic accomplishments that have helped to shape our artistic world today. The legacy of those years is truly done justice by Riley’s scholarship and his accessible prose.
April 6, 2020
Delightful deep dive into Jazz Age Paris! I had the pleasure of attending Charles A. Riley's book talk and signing at the French Alliance in Manhattan back in 2017 when the book first launched. Now, in our collective COVID19 confinement, I finally found the time to read it. How glad I am that I did! Riley covers the Jazz Age from the point of view of the natty Bright Young Things who decamped to Paris after the Great War, from the leading luminaries of the day (Porter and Gershwin, Picasso and Leger, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, cummings and Hughes) to lesser lauded lights e.g., an entire chapter devoted to modernist painter, Gerald Murphy. FREE AS GODS offers a sweeping deep dive across disciplines - art and architecture, literature, performance art from ballet to Broadway musicals etc. For the less erudite, the sheer breadth of topics and personalities presented can be dizzying in parts, but Riley's energetic prose and obvious passion for his subject carried me through chapter-upon-chapter. A fine read!
July 22, 2017
The premise of Charles A. Riley’s “Free as Gods: How the Jazz Age Reinvented Modernism" is that the gathering in Paris in the 1920s of the best authors, musicians, writers and activists of the world led to one of those special moments in time of great of creativity and talent. He theorizes that America's prohibition and Russia's revolution led to Paris being the carefree happy-go-lucky city where everyone that was anyone wanted to be. I loved the parts about Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gershwin, Porter, Picasso, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein and Nancy Cunard. Examples of their interactions, rivalries, and collaborations and the importance of their works during that time and the influences they had in their future works. Well written and reached book.
August 6, 2017
Received free from Early Reviewers.
I learned a lot about the Jazz age and the artists in Paris. It was very interesting. But I don't have a lot of background knowledge of that time and people. The author often made references to things and people I really don't know much about. So there were chunks that went right over my head.
I learned a lot about the Jazz age and the artists in Paris. It was very interesting. But I don't have a lot of background knowledge of that time and people. The author often made references to things and people I really don't know much about. So there were chunks that went right over my head.
November 14, 2019
I had to read this book slowly. In addition to writing the book well, Riley knows more about the culture scene in 1920s Paris than any author I have read thus far. There is so much information in such a delightful tone, I recommend this book and its companion The Jazz Age in France to anyone who loves the social culture of the 1920s.
February 18, 2024
An intellectual survey of the hedonism of Paris in the Jazz Age. Art, poetry, music, sex, dance, literature, and booze. Just for starts. An homage to hedonism. Glorious. 4.514 stars.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews