Appel, Ellington and the Modernist Canon

Abstract

This review/article questions the function of cannon building by focusing on Appel's recent attempt to include, among others, Ellington into the cannon of great modernist artists. I demonstrate that his arguments are insensitive to what may be different about Ellington's relationship to (so-called) primitivism when comparted to Picasso and others. I also show that his "readings" of assorted Ellington works assume a version of Neo-Liberalism that may well be at odds with Ellington's own relationship to contemporary America.