Lawrence Alloway in England: His criticism in context.
Item
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Title
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Lawrence Alloway in England: His criticism in context.
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Identifier
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AAI3204139
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identifier
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3204139
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Creator
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Leslie, Richard Gordon.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Rose-Carol Washton Long
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Date
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2003
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History | Biography
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Abstract
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The dissertation examines the criticism of Lawrence Alloway during his early years in London until his arrival in the USA in 1961 to develop an understanding of Alloway quite different from his association with the Pop Art movement in the USA by selectively contextualizing his critical position.;The first context examined is the new science of cybernetics applied to the human condition by Norbert Wiener in 1950. The dissertation aligns Alloway and his colleagues in the Independent Group (IG) with C.P. Snow's discourse between the humanities and science, and finds them exemplars of Snow's "new man" formed as a social consequence of World War II.;The second context is the emergence of the field of Cultural Studies from British cultural Marxism. By comparing Alloway's position to the Culturalism of Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, the concepts of Alloway and the IG are established as well ahead of, and perhaps influential upon, the development of Cultural Studies.;The third context is Alloway's early biography and writings, from 1949 to 1955, to examine how his middle-class life shaped his vision of culture and the importance in his criticism of a topical approach.;The fourth contexts are the London Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) and the IG. The dissertation argues that the ICA was responsible for much of the IGs new understanding of culture. It details the importance of Dadaism and how Alloway and the IG incorporated issues of randomness and equivalence in criticism and visual form.;The fifth context is the complex concept of modernity in England through the conservative but modern concept of populism in the 1951 Festival of Britain, the "New Humanism" debated in architecture and design, and Bauhaus concepts. Alloway's writings on modern sculpture are also examined, as are, for the first time, Alloway's BBC broadcasts on popular movies.;The final contexts are the emerging abstract and second-generation Pop artists, and Alloway's relationship to the criticism of Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. Alloway positioned his criticism as a synthesis of Greenberg and Rosenberg, a theory of criticism as a topical field intended to leverage cultural change.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
