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The author analyzes art and modernism and proposes a parallel account of visual modernism. Topics discussed include modernism as an expression of social modernity and modernity as an enduring social state, intensification of mobility in light modernity, and functions of the providential faith of heavy-modern life.

The author offers opinions on the art history and cultural studies concepts of modernity and modernism. It is noted that modernity represents differing ideas and very different historical periods in the traditions of different countries and regions. The concepts of modernity and modernism are said to be linked but not identical. It is argued that prevailing definitions of modernism are inaccurate due to their Eurocentrism and focus on Western cultural traditions and history. Aesthetic innovation is seen as the province of any culture, with the African diaspora and postcolonial art and literature among the examples cited.

This article discusses the meaning of Jewish writing as well as the counter-historical argument on the implications of Jews for Modernism. The author's cautionary advice is pertinent to the idea that Jewish modernism cannot be adequately cleared up by creating and analyzing a corpus of literature and art produced by people who happened to be Jews. Jewish modernism is a complex field of self-contradictory tensions and inversions and its story can be captured by representing a constellation of moments in its elastic life.

This article focuses on the influence of American-born modern dancer, Isadora Duncan, on modernist performance. In her 1927 autobiography, Duncan declares that she must place a motor in her soul before every performance and she consistently positions her choreography at the juncture of motorized movement and soulful expression. Her efforts to reimagine spirit through machine processes are shared by many key figures of modernism, including the Russian director Constantin Stanislavski, but her influence on modernist performance has not been recognized. Her theories are dismissed, primarily due to her use of terms associated with Victorianism (soul, inner self, and human spirit). Duncan's conjuncture of metaphysical and materialist thought is actually a dominant feature of twentieth-century art, shared by such diverse movements as Italian futurism, the Moscow Art Theatre's innovations in drama, Greenwich Village Radicalism, and U.S. feminism. Duncan repeatedly figures her fundamental movement principles through the symbol of the motor. First, the motor's ability to move several objects suggests the possibility of representing a multiplied body, an interest she shared with several futurists. The constant, tireless motion of the motorized machine also offers the ideal of continuous dance movements that appear to be executed effortlessly, without the intervention of the will, a concept she derives from Friedrich Nietzsche.