How far did American artists of the 1920s succeed in establishing their own style? As Youth and Beauty points out (in five very thorough and erudite essays), it was to some extent a doomed enterprise. The country was still young, and American artists of the 1920s disdained their 18th and 19th century predecessors for being too boring and Puritanical. But if they couldn’t quite escape the siren song of the European avant-garde, they still managed to imbue it with an authentically American flavor. The somber tonalities of the Great Depression would soon take over–but in the Roaring Twenties American art had brightness and energy, a youthful beauty of its own.

The exhibition Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties will be at the Brooklyn Museum from October 28, 2011 to January 29, 2012. It will then travel to the Dallas Museum of Art (March 4 to May 27, 2012) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (July 1 to September 16, 2012).