Overview

Surveying the Avant-Garde examines the art and literature of the Americas in the early twentieth century through the lens of the questionnaire, a genre as central as the manifesto to the history of the avant-garde. Questions such as “How do you imagine Latin America?” and “What should American art be?” issued by avant-garde magazines like Imán, a Latin American periodical based in Paris, and Cuba’s Revista de Avance demonstrate how editors, writers, and readers all grappled with the concept of “America,” particularly in relationship to Europe, and how the questionnaire became a structuring device for reflecting on their national and aesthetic identities in print. Through an analysis of these questionnaires and their responses, Lori Cole reveals how ideas like “American art,” as well as “modernism” and “avant-garde,” were debated at the very moment of their development and consolidation. Unlike a manifesto, whose signatories align with a single polemical text, the questionnaire produces a patchwork of responses, providing a composite and sometimes fractured portrait of a community. Such responses yield a self-reflexive history of the era as told by its protagonists, which include figures such as Gertrude Stein, Alfred Stieglitz, Jean Toomer, F. T. Marinetti, Diego Rivera, and Jorge Luis Borges. The book traces a genealogy of the genre from the Renaissance paragone, or “comparison of the arts,” through the rise of enquêtes in the late nineteenth century, up to the contemporary questionnaire, which proliferates in art magazines today. By analyzing a selection of surveys issued across the Atlantic, Cole indicates how they helped shape artists’ and writers’ understanding of themselves and their place in the world. Based on extensive archival research, this book reorients our understanding of modernism as both hemispheric and transatlantic by narrating how the artists and writers of the period engaged in aesthetic debates that informed and propelled print communities in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. Scholars of modernism and the avant-garde will welcome Cole’s original and compellingly crafted work.

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Reviews

Overall, this book offers a wide-ranging and engaging discussion of the ways in which literature, art and the Americas were discussed in some of the most important transatlantic magazines of the Modernist period. Cole moves seamlessly between the wider socio-cultural context and specific examples in order to provide an impressive analysis of responses to questions drawn from different magazines. The study covers a lot of ground but also broadly retains its focus on the questionnaire in a coherent and engaging way. -Eamon McCarthy, Bulletin of Spanish Studies One of Surveying the Avant-Garde's strengths is to be found in a deft compass for cosmopolitan literary history, which has no geographic home but which navigates 'a web of European and Latin American alliances' in Paris, Havana, Madrid, and Buenos Aires. -Harris Feinsod, American Literary History You've filled out a million of them, but have you ever really considered the questionnaire? Lori Cole has-and in Surveying the Avant-Garde she seats it beside the manifesto as a core genre of modernist self-portraiture and self-promotion. The result is a fascinating new take on a range of modernist print communities. What Cole has rejoined-the manifesto and the questionnaire, the bullhorn of avant-gardes and their fissured mirror-let no one put asunder. -Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of The Copywrights: Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination An outstanding contribution to modernist studies in general, to discussions on global modernism in particular, and to periodical studies. The questionnaire in modernist magazines is brought forth as a genre of paramount importance for the self-perception of modernism, as it shaped public discussions about the relevance, scope, and limitations of the modernist project. Lori Cole skillfully brings together magazines across three continents and re-creates a fascinating snapshot of the connections, networks, and circulation of ideas that were vital for the writers and artists of the period. -Effie Rentzou, author of Litterature malgre elle: Le surrealisme et la transformation du litteraire By approaching modernism through the very questions its protagonists were asking themselves, Cole destabilizes the terms of this history, in turn opening up vital new questions-and offering insightful, original answers-about the global character of the avant-garde. This fascinating and meticulously researched book reveals the questionnaire as a quintessential site for experimental art and literature with vast implications for how we understand the self-reflexive processes through which cultural meaning is produced and received. -Gwen Allen, author of Artists' Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art Lori Cole presents a new interpretation of modernism by examining the networks and circulation of ideas and images elaborated in transatlantic magazines. Using the questionnaire as a framework, her study destabilizes dominant narratives and reveals the numerous and often conflicting voices that contributed to and shaped notions of the avant-garde. -Michele Greet, author of Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960 Turning the manifesto-the touchstone genre for avant-gardists in the twentieth century-on its head, Lori Cole's provocative, innovative, and deeply researched book reveals the questionnaire to have been a constitutive genre of declaration-by-interrogation across the arts of the Americas. With this counterintuitive and superbly convincing study, Cole opens new pathways for scholars in multiple languages to pursue the politics and populaces that made modern aesthetics. -Gayle Rogers, author of Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature

You've filled out a million of them, but have you ever really considered the questionnaire? Lori Cole has--and in Surveying the Avant-Garde she seats it beside the manifesto as a core genre of modernist self-portraiture and self-promotion. The result is a fascinating new take on a range of modernist print communities. What Cole has rejoined--the manifesto and the questionnaire, the bullhorn of avant-gardes and their fissured mirror--let no one put asunder. --Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of The Copywrights: Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination An outstanding contribution to modernist studies in general, to discussions on global modernism in particular, and to periodical studies. The questionnaire in modernist magazines is brought forth as a genre of paramount importance for the self-perception of modernism, as it shaped public discussions about the relevance, scope, and limitations of the modernist project. Lori Cole skillfully brings together magazines across three continents and recreates a fascinating snapshot of the connections, networks, and circulation of ideas that were vital for the writers and artists of the period. --Effie Rentzou, author of Litterature malgre elle: Le surrealisme et la transformation du litteraire By approaching modernism through the very questions its protagonists were asking themselves, Cole destabilizes the terms of this history, in turn opening up vital new questions--and offering insightful, original answers--about the global character of the avant-garde. This fascinating and meticulously researched book reveals the questionnaire as a quintessential site for experimental art and literature with vast implications for how we understand the self-reflexive processes though which cultural meaning is produced and received. --Gwen Allen, author of Artists' Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art Lori Cole presents a new interpretation of modernism by examining the networks and circulation of ideas and images elaborated in transatlantic magazines. Using the questionnaire as a framework, her study destabilizes dominant narratives and reveals the numerous and often conflicting voices that contributed to and shaped notions of the avant-garde. --Michele Greet, author of Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960 Turning the manifesto--the touchstone genre for avant-gardists in the twentieth century--on its head, Lori Cole's provocative, innovative, and deeply researched book reveals the questionnaire to have been a constitutive genre of declaration-by-interrogation across the arts of the Americas. With this counterintuitive and superbly convincing study, Cole opens new pathways for scholars in multiple languages to pursue the politics and populaces that made modern aesthetics. --Gayle Rogers, author of Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of American and Spanish Literature

Turning the manifesto-the touchstone genre for avant-gardists in the twentieth century-on its head, Lori Cole's provocative, innovative, and deeply researched book reveals the questionnaire to have been a constitutive genre of declaration-by-interrogation across the arts of the Americas. With this counterintuitive and superbly convincing study, Cole opens new pathways for scholars in multiple languages to pursue the politics and populaces that made modern aesthetics. -Gayle Rogers, author of Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature Lori Cole presents a new interpretation of modernism by examining the networks and circulation of ideas and images elaborated in transatlantic magazines. Using the questionnaire as a framework, her study destabilizes dominant narratives and reveals the numerous and often conflicting voices that contributed to and shaped notions of the avant-garde. -Michele Greet, author of Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960 By approaching modernism through the very questions its protagonists were asking themselves, Cole destabilizes the terms of this history, in turn opening up vital new questions-and offering insightful, original answers-about the global character of the avant-garde. This fascinating and meticulously researched book reveals the questionnaire as a quintessential site for experimental art and literature with vast implications for how we understand the self-reflexive processes through which cultural meaning is produced and received. -Gwen Allen, author of Artists' Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art Surveying the Avant-Garde is an important contribution to the literature on 'little magazines' and the modernists and avant-garde that produced them, particularly for its focus both on the questionnaire-an integral aspect of their discourses scarcely studied-and the international, networked nature of their development. Cole's book is essential to any bibliography about the avant-garde in general. -Effie Rentzou, author of Litterature malgre elle: Le surrealisme et la transformation du litteraire You've filled out a million of them, but have you ever really considered the questionnaire? Lori Cole has-and in Surveying the Avant-Garde she seats it beside the manifesto as a core genre of modernist self-portraiture and self-promotion. The result is a fascinating new take on a range of modernist print communities. What Cole has rejoined-the manifesto and the questionnaire, the bullhorn of avant-gardes and their fissured mirror-let no one put asunder. -Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of The Copywrights: Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination One of Surveying the Avant-Garde's strengths is to be found in a deft compass for cosmopolitan literary history, which has no geographic home but which navigates 'a web of European and Latin American alliances' in Paris, Havana, Madrid, and Buenos Aires. -Harris Feinsod, American Literary History Overall, this book offers a wide-ranging and engaging discussion of the ways in which literature, art and the Americas were discussed in some of the most important transatlantic magazines of the Modernist period. Cole moves seamlessly between the wider socio-cultural context and specific examples in order to provide an impressive analysis of responses to questions drawn from different magazines. The study covers a lot of ground but also broadly retains its focus on the questionnaire in a coherent and engaging way. -Eamon McCarthy, Bulletin of Spanish Studies Surveying the Avant-Garde is an important contribution to the literature on little magazines and the modernists and avant-gardes that produced them, particularly for its focus both on an integral aspect of their discourses scarcely studied - the questionnaire - and the international, networked nature of their development. Cole's book is essential to any bibliography about the avant-garde in general. -David A. J. Murrieta Flores, Terrae Incognitae From this mass of material, [Lori Cole] crafts an enormously compelling narrative, by describing how writers and artists inhabited a universe of alliances and rivalries that crossed oceans, linguistic differences, and national borders. Across five chapters, she examines a seemingly endless succession of questions asked and answered by her protagonists. -Harper Montgomery, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture The book opens paths for study of the questionnaire's performative possibilities, which were ably plied by the Estridentista poet Manuel Maples Arce, for example. It also leads to in-depth examinations of local uses of the genre; in the case of Revista de Avance, contributors also explored the idea of America in racial terms. Cole leaves no doubt that the questionnaire proved an important genre for those who had a stake in the spread of modernism. -Lynda Klich, Modernism/Modernity

From this mass of material, [Lori Cole] crafts an enormously compelling narrative, by describing how writers and artists inhabited a universe of alliances and rivalries that crossed oceans, linguistic differences, and national borders. Across five chapters, she examines a seemingly endless succession of questions asked and answered by her protagonists. -Harper Montgomery, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture Surveying the Avant-Garde is an important contribution to the literature on little magazines and the modernists and avant-gardes that produced them, particularly for its focus both on an integral aspect of their discourses scarcely studied - the questionnaire - and the international, networked nature of their development. Cole's book is essential to any bibliography about the avant-garde in general. -David A. J. Murrieta Flores, Terrae Incognitae Overall, this book offers a wide-ranging and engaging discussion of the ways in which literature, art and the Americas were discussed in some of the most important transatlantic magazines of the Modernist period. Cole moves seamlessly between the wider socio-cultural context and specific examples in order to provide an impressive analysis of responses to questions drawn from different magazines. The study covers a lot of ground but also broadly retains its focus on the questionnaire in a coherent and engaging way. -Eamon McCarthy, Bulletin of Spanish Studies One of Surveying the Avant-Garde's strengths is to be found in a deft compass for cosmopolitan literary history, which has no geographic home but which navigates 'a web of European and Latin American alliances' in Paris, Havana, Madrid, and Buenos Aires. -Harris Feinsod, American Literary History You've filled out a million of them, but have you ever really considered the questionnaire? Lori Cole has-and in Surveying the Avant-Garde she seats it beside the manifesto as a core genre of modernist self-portraiture and self-promotion. The result is a fascinating new take on a range of modernist print communities. What Cole has rejoined-the manifesto and the questionnaire, the bullhorn of avant-gardes and their fissured mirror-let no one put asunder. -Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of The Copywrights: Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination Surveying the Avant-Garde is an important contribution to the literature on 'little magazines' and the modernists and avant-garde that produced them, particularly for its focus both on the questionnaire-an integral aspect of their discourses scarcely studied-and the international, networked nature of their development. Cole's book is essential to any bibliography about the avant-garde in general. -Effie Rentzou, author of Litterature malgre elle: Le surrealisme et la transformation du litteraire By approaching modernism through the very questions its protagonists were asking themselves, Cole destabilizes the terms of this history, in turn opening up vital new questions-and offering insightful, original answers-about the global character of the avant-garde. This fascinating and meticulously researched book reveals the questionnaire as a quintessential site for experimental art and literature with vast implications for how we understand the self-reflexive processes through which cultural meaning is produced and received. -Gwen Allen, author of Artists' Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art Lori Cole presents a new interpretation of modernism by examining the networks and circulation of ideas and images elaborated in transatlantic magazines. Using the questionnaire as a framework, her study destabilizes dominant narratives and reveals the numerous and often conflicting voices that contributed to and shaped notions of the avant-garde. -Michele Greet, author of Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960 Turning the manifesto-the touchstone genre for avant-gardists in the twentieth century-on its head, Lori Cole's provocative, innovative, and deeply researched book reveals the questionnaire to have been a constitutive genre of declaration-by-interrogation across the arts of the Americas. With this counterintuitive and superbly convincing study, Cole opens new pathways for scholars in multiple languages to pursue the politics and populaces that made modern aesthetics. -Gayle Rogers, author of Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature

“Turning the manifesto—the touchstone genre for avant-gardists in the twentieth century—on its head, Lori Cole’s provocative, innovative, and deeply researched book reveals the questionnaire to have been a constitutive genre of declaration-by-interrogation across the arts of the Americas. With this counterintuitive and superbly convincing study, Cole opens new pathways for scholars in multiple languages to pursue the politics and populaces that made modern aesthetics.” —Gayle Rogers, author of Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature “Lori Cole presents a new interpretation of modernism by examining the networks and circulation of ideas and images elaborated in transatlantic magazines. Using the questionnaire as a framework, her study destabilizes dominant narratives and reveals the numerous and often conflicting voices that contributed to and shaped notions of the avant-garde.” —Michele Greet, author of Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920–1960 “By approaching modernism through the very questions its protagonists were asking themselves, Cole destabilizes the terms of this history, in turn opening up vital new questions—and offering insightful, original answers—about the global character of the avant-garde. This fascinating and meticulously researched book reveals the questionnaire as a quintessential site for experimental art and literature with vast implications for how we understand the self-reflexive processes through which cultural meaning is produced and received.” —Gwen Allen, author of Artists' Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art “Surveying the Avant-Garde is an important contribution to the literature on ‘little magazines’ and the modernists and avant-garde that produced them, particularly for its focus both on the questionnaire—an integral aspect of their discourses scarcely studied—and the international, networked nature of their development. Cole’s book is essential to any bibliography about the avant-garde in general.” —Effie Rentzou, author of Littérature malgré elle: Le surréalisme et la transformation du littéraire “You’ve filled out a million of them, but have you ever really considered the questionnaire? Lori Cole has—and in Surveying the Avant-Garde she seats it beside the manifesto as a core genre of modernist self-portraiture and self-promotion. The result is a fascinating new take on a range of modernist print communities. What Cole has rejoined—the manifesto and the questionnaire, the bullhorn of avant-gardes and their fissured mirror—let no one put asunder.” —Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of The Copywrights: Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination “One of Surveying the Avant-Garde’s strengths is to be found in a deft compass for cosmopolitan literary history, which has no geographic home but which navigates ‘a web of European and Latin American alliances’ in Paris, Havana, Madrid, and Buenos Aires.” —Harris Feinsod American Literary History “Overall, this book offers a wide-ranging and engaging discussion of the ways in which literature, art and the Americas were discussed in some of the most important transatlantic magazines of the Modernist period. Cole moves seamlessly between the wider socio-cultural context and specific examples in order to provide an impressive analysis of responses to questions drawn from different magazines. The study covers a lot of ground but also broadly retains its focus on the questionnaire in a coherent and engaging way.” —Eamon McCarthy Bulletin of Spanish Studies “Surveying the Avant-Garde is an important contribution to the literature on “little magazines” and the modernists and avant-gardes that produced them, particularly for its focus both on an integral aspect of their discourses scarcely studied – the questionnaire – and the international, networked nature of their development. Cole’s book is essential to any bibliography about the avant-garde in general.” —David A. J. Murrieta Flores Terrae Incognitae “From this mass of material, [Lori Cole] crafts an enormously compelling narrative, by describing how writers and artists inhabited a universe of alliances and rivalries that crossed oceans, linguistic differences, and national borders. Across five chapters, she examines a seemingly endless succession of questions asked and answered by her protagonists.” —Harper Montgomery Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture “The book opens paths for study of the questionnaire’s performative possibilities, which were ably plied by the Estridentista poet Manuel Maples Arce, for example. It also leads to in-depth examinations of local uses of the genre; in the case of Revista de Avance, contributors also explored the idea of “America” in racial terms. Cole leaves no doubt that the questionnaire proved an important genre for those who had a stake in the spread of modernism.” —Lynda Klich Modernism/Modernity

Author Information

Lori Cole is Clinical Associate Professor and Associate Director of the interdisciplinary master’s program XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement at New York University.

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