What is form in modern art? How could a work of art attain organic life in a world dominated by new technology? In this important new book, Brandon Taylor proposes that biology and the life sciences themselves supplied the analogies and metaphors by which the modern artist was guided. For the artistic giants of the period -- Picasso, Miro, Kandinsky, Strzeminski, Dali, Arp, Motherwell, and Pollock, as well as less-known figures such as Taeuber, Erni, and Kobro -- such questions loomed large in the studio, in conversation, in the press, and in the writings of the artists themselves. In a book rich in new research and fresh thinking, a well-known art historian proposes six modalities of organic and vital life that pervade the great experiments of modern art: the organic, the biomorphic, the ambiguous, the monstrous, the dialectical, and the liquid.