Art as Music, Music as Poetry, Poetry as Art, from Whistler to Stravinsky and Beyond

Book excerpt: An extraordinary fraternity of poets, painters and composers in Paris, between 1885 and 1945, built our modern notion of 'great art' on the principle that we must always think about the value of a work of art, not within the logic of its own medium, but as if it transposed the value of another medium. Peter Dayan chronicles the rise of this principle, describes its eclipse from the 1960s and shows how, in the 21st century, it is fighting back.