Old-fashioned modern’

In 1927, Claude Flight proposed that the linocut, a comparatively new art form, could create a new relationship between the modern public and modern art. It was, he theorised, ideally suited for the mass market as it was relatively small, it was relatively cheap, and its directness accorded with the spirit of the modern age. Many works by Flight and other artists of the Grosvenor School, at which Flight taught from 1926 to 1930, democratically aligned artist, subject, and viewer and focused on scenes of contemporary public life, from manual labour to recreational sports, mass spectator events to commuter experience. This article investigates the ambiguous middlebrow position of the Grosvenor School linocuts, which never achieved the widespread popularity that Flight anticipated or cultivated the broad, aspirational audience he envisioned for these works. It poses that Flight's utopian vision for mass modernism was frustrated by his limited comprehension of the ‘average man’ his linocuts sought to address, and the absence of suitable critical and commercial apparatus to enable the public to meet him on the terms he desired

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Impermanence · Middlebrow · Modernism (music · Period (music · Political science · Popularity · Sociology · Taste · Visual arts · Cultural Identity and Heritage · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Psychology

• Within the Reach of All’

  Open Access•Emma West•Modernist Cultures•2020

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