TV by Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television

摘要

Conventional wisdom has it that much of the form and content of early television can be traced back to theater, vaudeville, movies, and radio. Lynn Spigel begs to differ. In TV by Design, she argues that the form and content of TV between the late 1940s and early 1970s were also shaped by contemporaneous developments in modern art, broadly defined. Drawing on an impressive array of primary and secondary materials, Spigel examines the convergences between television and art after World War II. Noting that "there is no sustained historical study of broadcast television's relationship to the broader context of postwar visual arts" (p. 6), Spigel seeks to shine a light on a symbiosis most television and art historians have overlooked. Her book is a bold attempt to redraw the history of TV's golden age.