R. M. Brain, The Pulse of Modernism : Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siècle Europe

R. M. Brain, The Pulse of Modernism : Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siècle Europe, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2015, 384 p.

– Robert Brain traces the origins of artistic modernism to specific technologies of perception developed in late-nineteenth-century laboratories. Brain argues that the thriving fin-de-siècle field of « physiological aesthetics, » which sought physiological explanations for the capacity to appreciate beauty and art, changed the way poets, artists, and musicians worked and brought a dramatic transformation to the idea of art itself.

– Robert Michael Brain is associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia.