The Life of Forms in Art: Modernism, Organism, Vitality

by Brandon Taylor

What is form in modern art? How could a work of art achieve its organic life in a world increasingly dominated by mechanism, by new technology? In this new book, Brandon Taylor proposes that biology and the life sciences themselves supplied many of the analogies and metaphors by which modern artists were guided. For the creative giants of the period - Picasso, Miró, Kandinsky, Strzeminski, Dalí, Arp, Motherwell and Pollock, as well as less-known figures such as Taeuber, Erni and Kobro - questions of 'living' form loomed large in studio conversation, in the press, and in the writings of the artists themselves.

In a book rich in new research and fresh thinking, a well-known art historian proposes six modalities of organic and vital life that pervade the radical experiments of modern the organic , the biomorphic , the ambiguous , the monstrous , the dialectical , and the liquid .

272 pages, Paperback

Published October 29, 2020

About the author

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Brandon Taylor is Professor in the History of Art, University of Southampton. His other publications include Art and Literature Under the Bolsheviks, Art for the Nation: Exhibitions and the London Public, and Art Today.