I started college at the end of the 60s, and the only thing I wanted to study was cultural and generational borderlines. At first I thought my major would be medieval heresy, which seemed a perfect example of a clash of beliefs. But when I returned to graduate school many years later, I decided to focus on a more recent era. I wanted to understand the relationship between the Armory Show and New York, and that of Rite of Spring and Paris. Two scandals, two cities. But even that was not quite right. And I wound up concentrating on William Crary Brownell, a very conservative editor at the turn of the century. Older now, I needed to understand the border from the other side.
While I was in graduate school, I began to work as an editor of books for children and teenagers first at Harper, now at Holt. I wanted to figure out how to create books that were as challenging and novel as the ideas that surround us, and yet would engage younger readers. I wanted to edit books that were as smart, curious, passionate, and individual as their readers.
ART ATTACK is this biography set between covers. It is about borderlines of art and of generations, yet it seeks to erase the artificial borders that limit who should read what, or how they read it. This is one book that is meant to be read with loud music blasting in the background -- after all, that is exactly how I wrote it.
Art Attack: the book
Avant-Garde Links
Marc Aronson
Cover art copyright Chris Raschka.
URL: http://www.overbooked.org/originals/artattack3.html