Reviews for The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America

The average rating for The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-11-14 00:00:00 Trevor Bates Unnecessarily dense, with inadequate explanations of "gestalt" and the physics-derived philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. The book succeeds in capturing the shared interest in spontaneity that radical artists, writers, dancers, psychologists, and educators shared in the 1940s-50s. But the concluding chapter, suggesting a gap between apolitical hippies and political members of the New Left, while tracking the evolution of improvised art, does not come together well.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-18 00:00:00 Daniel Dunajsky It's hard to not compare this to the book I read just prior to it, Felt. This was a much more enjoyable read. It's dense but not difficult. I think my favorite chapter was The Body in Plastic Dialogue: Dance & Ceramics because I knew the least about those subjects going into this and learned a lot! If you feel like you need your art criticism fix The Culture of Spontaneity will do just fine for you.