cover image Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s

Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s

Lewis Mumford, . . Univ. of California, $29.95 (265pp) ISBN 978-0-520-24858-8

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) is well known as an outspoken critic of modern architecture, urban life, technology and American culture, but his art criticism has largely been forgotten. Art historian Wojtowicz (Lewis Mumford and American Modernism ) remedies this by gathering Mumford's art reviews for the New Yorker from 1932 to 1937. In these perceptive essays, Mumford aired his views on the exhibitions of European and American painters, photography, industrial design and decorative arts. He favored certain painters—especially John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Albert Pinkham Ryder and Thomas Hart Benton—but he paid equal attention to many lesser-known artists. His criticisms were seldom strident, but he didn't hesitate to censure styles such as abstraction and surrealism when they displayed nihilistic tendencies, or to take institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art to task when he felt they weren't fulfilling their missions. Mumford's prose is accessible and witty, and although the pieces seem dated, they're worth reading for their insights into the art world between the two wars. An essay entitled "The Metropolitan Milieu," published in a festschrift for Alfred Stieglitz, with its emphasis on the dehumanizing aspects of the modern city—a familiar theme in Mumford's architectural writings—rounds out this impressive collection. Illus. (Jan.)