Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism - Hardcover

Mary Ann Caws is distinguished professor emerita and resident professor of English, French, and comparative literature in the Graduate School, City University of New York. She is the author of several books published by Reaktion, including Blaise Pascal, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and The Modern Art Cookbook.

“‘They were all here,’ writes Caws about one of the astonishing ‘creative gatherings’ she summons from the aching past in this vivid, impossible-to-put-down book. The next best thing to being there is to relish this delicious mix of gossip, intense creativity, and cultural analysis. Under Caws’s spell, crisscrossing the globe in search of those magical pockets of collaborative electricity, we all become what she calls ‘lovers of gatherings.’” (Christopher Benfey, Mount Holyoke College, author of “Red Brick, Black Mountain, White Clay”)

“There are few scholars alive that combine erudition with first-hand experience like Caws. Caws’s writing has the enigmatic, serendipitous and discursive character of the writers, poets, and artists she has spent her life with. The seemingly disparate threads of people, places, and polemics meander, intersect, and tangle in a rich warp and weft; a travelogue in time, spaces, and ideas, taking the reader on a voyage of intellectual and historical discovery. Funny, insightful, and provocative, Creative Gatherings shows that despite the ubiquity of new media, spending time together—at bars, cafés, salons and sitting rooms—remains at the heart of human creativity.” (James M. Bradburne, general director of the Pinacoteca di Brera and Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Italy)

“Creative Gatherings documents the artists' colonies, bohemian haunts, country retreats, and favorite watering holes of some of the greatest cultural luminaries of the modern age. Rather than focus on the contributions of individual artists and writers, this enchanting book chronicles the shared lives of the various avantgarde communities across Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beautifully written and informed by meticulous research, [Caws’s book is] an instant classic: a must-read for anyone interested in the history and legacy of modernism.” (Michael R. Taylor, chief curator and deputy director, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)