"THE 7 LIVELY ARTS" LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER TREATISE ON 1920s POP CULTURE (SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR).
Item Description
Published in 1924, Gilbert Seldes' "The 7 Lively Arts" was a watershed moment in the critical acceptance of the then "lowbrow" arts of jazz, popular song, American film, dance, burlesque, vaudeville, stage performance and lastly, comic strips. It was this book that turned critics of the era towards accepting and critiquing these areas of popular culture along side fine art, opera and other manifestations of "highbrow" culture. Seldes put forth the notion that the works of George Herriman, Clare Briggs, Bud Fisher, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mack Sennett, George Gershwin, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Irene Castle, Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, George M. Cohan, Fanny Brice and Irving Berlin were to be taken just as seriously. Seldes was especially enamored w/Herriman's "Krazy Kat" comic strip, writing a separate chapter about Herriman's creation, reprinted the program notes from John Alden Carpenter's Krazy Kat Ballet as an appendix and reserved the only double-page spread in the book to reproduce (bw) a section of the very rare color page from Jan. 21, 1922, one of only 10 such color Saturday (not Sunday) pages by Herriman that was only published in the "New York Evening Journal." This was in addition to his chapter on The "vulgar" comic strip, where he extolled the virtues of Clare Briggs, Maurice Ketten, Jimmy Swinnerton, Fontaine Fox, Tad Dorgan and laid out the premise that comic strips, though then considered vulgar, we were worthy of being an entertainment medium in their own right. A revolutionary opinion at the time. This book is the best way to understand the hold Krazy Kat, Chaplin, Jolson, Brice and the other performers of the The 7 Lively Arts had over the intelligentsia and public of the 1920s. The 398 page book is illustrated w/a variety of images to emphasize the author's focus on the arts made by some of his favorites in the text. The frontispiece illustration on slapstick is by Ralph Barton, Chaplin is caricatured by ee cummins. George M. Cohan, Willie Collier and Leon Errol are caricatured by Al Frueh (theater cartoonist for the "New York World"). Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Al Jolson, Bert Savoy, Joe Cook and Irene Castle are featured w/rare tipped-in photos not normally seen by these greats of the time. This is a very special copy, a first edition w/the low number 2 of the limited edition of 300 in Javanese Batik binding, signed by the author in black ink on special edition page. Missing dustjacket. Wear to top/bottom of spine, which has evenly aged and some corner foxing to front/back covers. Pages are evenly aged to cream in color and are Exc. One of a very small handful of survivors from this small limited edition, further enhanced by having been signed by Seldes himself. Rare and historic.
