Resumen de Neew York troisième Rome: pourquoi l'Amérique résista si longtemps à l'idée d'art moderne
New York, third Rome: why America resisted the idea of Modern Art for so long.
Before stealing the idea of modern art from Paris, New York was involved in another struggle with Paris: that of the recuperation of the idea of tradition, tradition that in Paris had been systematically flouted by the last third of the 19th century. The birth of North American "Muralism" in the 1890s, then its development through the New Deal program reflects this sudden reversal of the relation with Paris: from admiration to rejection. The American decorator replays the past in the present and experiences his conquest of the wall as an update "Renaissance". By favoring connections with a very ancient Italian past (especially the Venetian 16th century) over any other reference, artists such as Kenyon Cox and Thomas Hart Benton exhibited to one and all their pretention to continue this Italian legacy that Paris, through its avant-garde, had definitively abandoned.
