C. S. Peirce and Twentieth-Century American Art : Overcoming Ignorance and Isolation

How does engaging with Avant Garde American art free us from the limitations of our history and context?

Why is it that the appreciation of this art furnishes us with the best means of transcending both the idiosyncrasies of individual experience and the stranglehold of unchallenged tradition? How does viewing it enable us to escape the harm caused by ignorance and isolation?

In addressing these questions, this book appeals to the philosophy of the American pragmatist C.S. Peirce. It is oriented around Peirce’s declaration that “the individual man, since his separate existence is manifested only by ignorance and error, so far as he is anything apart from his fellows, and from what he and they are to be, is only a negation.”. Mary Magada-Ward argues that aspects of Peircian pragmaticism are uniquely suited to a comprehension of American Avant Garde art. Just as Peirce’s emphasis upon the community of inquirers both rectifies the individualistic tendencies of modern philosophy while also borrowing from the insights of the scholastic realists, American art is not only characterized by radical innovation but also indebted to past traditions of seeing and making.

Magada-Ward’s interpretation of Peircian pragmaticism presented and selection of specific artworks to investigate are shaped by the feminist imperative to scrutinize, and eventually eliminate, the assumption that human beings rightfully come in only one of two oppositional, or complimentary, kinds.