Model Shock w/ Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen on “Modern Art & the Remaking of the Human Disposition” (NM48)

By the end of the 19th century, cascading developments in science and philosophy were radically challenging the way Western society understood what it means “to think” — and how, in turn, a sentient human could be depicted. Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen, a scholar of late-19th and early-20th century art and associate director of the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, joins us to discuss her new book, “Modern Art & The Remaking of the Human Disposition” (2021, U. Chicago Press), which brilliantly and with astonishing depth explores not just the shifts in artistic conventions during this time, but also the emergent cybernetic processes that catalyzed them.

University of Chicago Press, 2021

Georges Seurat, Les Poseuses, 1887. (Barnes Foundation)

From left: Max Klinger, study for Beethoven-Denkmal, 1885-86. (Beethoven Haus); Victor Pannelier, photo of Le Penseur in Rodin's studio, 1881. (Musée Rodin)

Gustav Klimt, Beethovenfries (detail of the Hostile Powers—Typhon and his Gorgon daughters with Lust, Unchastity, and Excess ), 1901. (Vienna Secession)

Adolph de Meyer photograph of Vaslav Nijinsky in 1912 as the faun in the Ballets Russes production L'Après-midi d'un faune (collotype published in Meyer's book Le Prelude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune, 1914)

To read Emmelyn’s words and to see all 100+ images, get your copy of Modern Art and the Remaking of the Human Disposition here.

U. Chicago Press