ABSTRACT
Modernism was a revolution. And in many respects a distinctly American one. Few artistic movements have blended sensibility, style, and place quite as perfectly as modernist America. Yet why? One answer may lie in Gertrude Stein’s somewhat off-hand comment that the U.S. was the oldest country in the world because it had been in the twentieth century the longest. While Edgar Degas was painting ballerinas, the Vatican initiating papal infallibility, John Ruskin venerating “The Stones of Venice,” and Queen Victoria celebrating her golden jubilee, Elisha Otis was perfecting the elevator, William Le Baron Jenney was building the first steel-framed skyscraper, and New Yorkers were watching the construction and completion of the Brooklyn Bridge.
