Bauhaus: The Face of the 20th Century by 
The Post-impressionists. Rousseau by 
Wassily Kandinsky
The ABC's of Bauhaus and Design Theory by
Interior Design magazine says thatThe ABC's of the Bauhaus is, "a collection of visually and intellectually stimulating essays about basic design courses at the Bauhaus, Froebel toys, inflation in the Weimar Republic, the typography of Herbert Bayer, Psychoanalysis, and fractal geometry. A fascinating fantasia on an elementary theme." And Elysabeth Yates Burns McKee, fromDesign Book Review says that "perhaps the most successful aspect ofThe ABC's is its ability to elucidate complexand fundamentaltheroetical aspects of the Bauhaus program."
The Aesthetics of Matter by
It has often been argued that the arrival of the early-20th-century avant-gardes and modernisms coincided with an in-depth exploration of the materiality of art and writing. The European historical avant-gardes and modernisms excelled in their attempts to establish the specificity of media and art forms as well as in experimenting with the hybridity of the materials of their multiple disciplines. This third volume of the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies sheds light on the full range and import of this aspect in avant-garde and modernist aesthetics across all art forms and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The book's contributions, written by experts from some 20 countries, seek to answer the following questions: What sort of objects and material, works and media help us to properly grasp the avant-garde and modernist "aesthetics of matter"? How were affects, emotions and sensory and bodily experiences transferred and transformed in the experiment with matter? How were "immaterial" things such as concepts of time changed in this aesthetic moment? What "material meanings" were disseminated in the cultural transfer and translation of objects? How did subsequent avant-gardes deal with the "aesthetics of matter" in their response to historical predecessors?
Alchemist of the Avant-garde: The Case of Marcel Duchamp by
Acknowledged as the "Artist of the Century, " Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) left a legacy that dominates the art world to this day. Inventing the ironically degage attitude of "ready-made" art-making, Duchamp heralded the postmodern era and replaced Pablo Picasso as the role model for avant-garde artists. John F. Moffitt challenges commonly accepted interpretations of Duchamp's art and persona by showing that his mature art, after 1910, is largely drawn from the influence of the occult traditions. Moffitt demonstrates that the key to understanding the cryptic meaning of Duchamp's diverse artworks and writings is alchemy, the most pictorial of all the occult philosophies and sciences. This innovative art history is written in a lively, unique style. Much like a prosecuting lawyer's brief, Alchemist of the Avant-Garde argues its case with documented historical evidence, not theoretical models. A fascinating read, Moffitt's work will be welcomed by artists, art lovers, and all those interested in the cultural history of the modern and postmodern eras.
Antimodernism and Artistic Experience by
Antimodernism is a term used to describe the international reaction to the onslaught of the modern world that swept across industrialized Western Europe, North America, and Japan in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Scholars in art history, anthropology, political science, history, and feminist media studies explore antimodernism as an artistic response to a perceived sense of loss - in particular, the loss of 'authentic' experience. Embracing the 'authentic' as a redemptive antidote to the threat of unheralded economic and social change, antimodernism sought out experience supposedly embodied in pre-industrialized societies - in medieval communities or 'oriental cultures, ' in the Primitive, the Traditional, or Folk. In describing the ways in which modern artists used antimodern constructs in formulating their work, the contributors examine the involvement of artists and intellectuals in the reproduction and diffusion of these concepts. In doing so they reveal the interrelation of fine art, decorative art, souvenir or tourist art, and craft, questioning the ways in which these categories of artistic expression reformulate and naturalise social relations in the field of cultural production.
Architecture and Cubism by
Together, these essays show that although there were many points of intersection--historical, metaphorical, theoretical, and ideological--between cubism and architecture, there was no simple, direct link between them.
Art Deco by
Art Deco style was established on the ashes of a disappeared world, the one from before the First World War, and on the foundation stone of a world yet to become, opened to the most undisclosed promises. Forgetting herself in the whirl of Jazz Age and the euphoria of the "Années Folles", the Garçonne with her linear shape reflects the architectural style of Art Deco: to the rounded curves succeed the simple and plain androgynous straight line...Architecture, painting, furniture and sculpture, dissected by the author, proclaim the druthers for sharp lines and broken angles. Although ephemeral, this movement keeps on influencing contemporary design.
Art Deco by
This book argues that mobility is the central theme of the interwar mode of design known today as Art Deco. It is present on the very surfaces of Art Deco objects and architecture - in iconography and general formal qualities (whether the zigzag rectilinear forms popular in the 1920s or curvilinear streamlining of the 1930s). By focussing on mobility as a means of tying the seemingly disparate qualities of Art Deco together, Michael Windover shows how the surface-level expressions correspond as well with underpinning systems of mobility, including those associated with migration, transportation, commodity exchange, capital, and communication.Journeying across the globe - from a skyscraper in Vancouver, B.C., to a department store in Los Angeles, and from super-cinemas in Bombay (Mumbai) to radio cabinets in Canadian living rooms - this richly illustrated book examines the reach of Art Deco as it affected public cultures. Windover's innovative perspective exposes some of the socio-political consequences of this "mode of mobility" and offers some reasons as to how and why Art Deco was incorporated into everyday lifestyles around the world.
Art Deco 1910-1939 by
Art Deco - the style redolent of the flapper girl, the luxury ocean liner, Hollywood film and the skyscraper - came to epitomize the glamour, luxury and hedonism of the Jazz Age. It burst on to the world stage at the 1925 Exposition internationale des art decoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris, and quickly swept across the globe. Its influence was felt everywhere, from the skylines of New York and Shanghai to the design of fashionable eveningwear and plastic radios. Above all, it became the signature style of the pleasure palaces of the age - hotels, cocktail bars, nightclubs and cinemas. This authoritative publication brings together leading experts to explore the sources, varied forms of expression, distinct visual language and global reach of Art Deco. With its breathtaking illustrations, this lavish volume is the definitive book on what is, arguably, the most popular style of the twentieth century.
Art Deco Architecture: : Design, Decoration, and Detail from the Twenties and Thirties by
This exploration of Art Deco architectural design embraces many different times and places in its visual and verbal account of the movement's origins, development, and influence.
Art Deco Style by
The dominant style in architecture and design of the 1920s and 30s, Art Deco was an exuberant reaction to the austerity of the war years. Characterized by geometric shapes, stylized natural forms and the use of luxurious materials, and inspired by sources ranging from Ancient Egypt to the Ballets Russes, the style rapidly spread from France to Britain, the United States and all over the globe during the 1930s. The fascinating text of this attractive volume charts the various worldwide manifestations of Art Deco to demonstrate with eloquence that the style - though labelled a 'movement' only in retrospect - had an astounding coherence that led to its international appeal. The first ever book to explore Art Deco's pervasive influence in all areas of life, Art Deco Styleis illustrated with examples from all over the world, from liners to letter-boxes and lampposts.
Art in Progress: A Philosophical Response to the End of the Avant-garde by
A philosophical essay in support of the argument that progress in art is both possible and necessary.
Avant-Garde and Criticism by
Avant-Garde and Criticism sheds new light on the complex aims, functions, practices and contexts of art-criticism in relation to the European avant-garde. Although many avant-garde works and the avant-gardes of various countries have been analyzed, considerably less attention has been given to the reviews in newspapers and journals on avant-garde literature, art, architecture and film. This volume of Avant-Garde Critical Studies will look at how art critics operated in a strategic way.The strategies of avant-garde criticism are diverse. Art critics, especially when they are artists themselves, attempt to manipulate the cultural climate in their favour. They use their position to legitimize avant-garde concepts and to conquer a place in the cultural field. But they are also markedly influenced by the context in which they operate. The position of fellow-critics and the ideological bias of the papers in which they publish can be as important as the political climate in which their criticism flourishes. The analysis of avant-garde art criticism can also make clear how strategies sometimes fail and involuntarily display non-avant-garde characteristics. On the other hand traditionalist criticism on the avant-garde offers new insights into its status and reception in a given time and place.This volume is of interest for scholars, teachers and students who are interested in the avant-garde of the interbellum-period and work in the field of literature, art, film and architecture.
Back to the Futurists by
In 1909 the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Founding Manifesto of Futurism was published on the front page of Le Figaro. Between 1909 and 1912 the Futurists published over thirty manifestos, celebrating speed and danger, glorifying war and technology, and advocating political and artistic revolution. This collection of essays aims to reassess the activities of the Italian Futurist movement from an international and interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on its activities and legacies in the field of poetry, painting, sculpture, theatre, cinema, advertising and politics. The essays offer exciting new readings in gender politics, aesthetics, historiography, intermediality and interdisciplinarity. They explore the works of major players of the movement as well as its lesser-known figures, and the often critical impact of Futurism on contemporary or later avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Dada and Vorticism.
Bauhaus, Dessau : Walter Gropius by
The Dessau Bauhaus encapsulates the ethos of the design school's revolutionary new thinking. It is the model building of a pioneer institution. With its interlocking cubic forms, reinforced concrete frame and curtain walls of glass, it was the first large building to crystallize the Modern Movement's new conception of form and space. Designed by the school's founder Walter Gropius, it gives vigorous expression to his ideal of a fusion of hand and intellect, with the technical school and library in one block and the workshops in a separate large block with spectacular glazed faqades. One of the most famous buildings of the Modern Movement, the Bauhaus is distinguished not only by its adventurous use of modern materials but by its symbolic resonances, joining as it does the worlds of science and craft.
The Bauhaus: 1919-1933 by
Functional beauty: the seminal modernist movement Founded in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus school developed a revolutionary approach that fused fine art with craftsmanship and engineering in everything from architecture to furniture, typography, and even theater. Originally headed by Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus counted among its members artists and architects such as Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, L#65533;szl#65533; Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. In 1930, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe took over as the leader, but soon after, in 1933, the Nazi government shut down the school. During its fourteen years of existence, Bauhaus managed to change the faces of art, architecture, and industrial design forever and is still hugely influential today. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Architecture Series features: an introduction to the life and work of the architect the major works in chronological order information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts and plans)
Bauhaus: 1919-1933, Weimar-Dessau-Berlin by
The Bauhaus movement (meaning the "house of building") developed in three German cities - it began in Weimar between 1919 and 1925, then continued in Dessau, from 1925 to 1932, and finally ended in 1932-1933 in Berlin. Three leaders presided over the growth of the movement: Walter Gropius, from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer, from 1928 to 1930, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, from 1930 to 1933. Founded by Gropius in the rather conservative city of Weimar, the new capital of Germany, which had just been defeated by the other European nations in the First World War, the movement became a flamboyant response to this humiliation. Combining new styles in architecture, design, and painting, the Bauhaus aspired to be an expression of a generational utopia, striving to free artists facing a society that remained conservative in spite of the revolutionary efforts of the post-war period.Using the most modern materials, the Bauhaus was born out of the precepts of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, introducing new forms, inspired by the most ordinary of objects, into everyday life. The shuttering of the center in Berlin by the Nazis in 1933 did not put an end to the movement, since many of its members chose the path of exile and established themselves in the United States. Although they all went in different directions artistically, their work shared the same origin. The most influential among the Bauhaus artists were Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandisky, and Lothar Schreyer. Through a series of beautiful reproductions, this work provides an overview of the Bauhaus era, including the history, influence, and major figures of this revolutionary movement, which turned everyday life into art.
Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism by 
Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago by
Available again in a boxed hardcover edition, the definitive work on Bauhaus. Bauhaus has established itself with designers and architects as a standard work and the most comprehensive collection of documents and visual material ever published on this famous school of design. Now this definitive work on Bauhaus is available again in a boxed hardcover edition. Documents in Bauhaus are taken from a wide array of sources--public manifestos, private letters, internal memoranda, jotted-down conversations, minutes of board and faculty meetings, sketches and schemata, excerpts from speeches and books, newspaper and magazine articles, Nazi polemics, official German government documents, court proceedings, budgets, and curricula. The illustrations include architectural plans and realizations, craft and industrial model designs (furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, stained glass, typography, wallpaper), sculpture, paintings, drawings, etchings, woodcuts, posters, programs, advertising brochures, stage settings, and formal portraits of such Bauhaus masters as Walter Gropius, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, Hebert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse and Modernism by
Reconsidering the status and meaning of Bauhaus objects in relation to the multiple re-tellings of the school's history, this volume positions art objects of the Bauhaus within the theoretical, artistic, historical, and cultural concerns in which they were produced and received. Contributions from leading scholars writing in the field todaynbsp;- including Frederic J. Schwartz, Magdalena Droste, and Alina Paynenbsp;-nbsp;offer an entirely new treatment of the Bauhaus.nbsp;Issues such as art and design pedagogy, the practice of photography, copyright law, and critical theory are discussed. Through a strong thematic structure, new archival research and innovative methodologies, the questions and subsequent conclusions presented here re-examine the history of the Bauhaus and its continuing legacy. Essential reading for anyone studying the Bauhaus, modern art and design.
The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism by
Nicholas Fox Weber, for thirty-three years head of the Albers Foundation, spent many years with Anni and Josef Albers, the only husband-and-wife artistic pair at the Bauhaus (she was a textile artist; he a professor and an artist, in glass, metal, wood, and photography). The Alberses told him their own stories and described life at the Bauhaus with their fellow artists and teachers, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well these figures’ lesser-known wives and girlfriends. In this extraordinary group biography, Weber brilliantly brings to life the Bauhaus geniuses and the community of the pioneering art school in Germany’s Weimar and Dessau in the 1920s and early 1930s. Here are: Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, the architect who streamlined design early in his career and who saw the school as a place for designers to collaborate in an ideal setting . . . a dashing hussar, the ardent young lover of the renowned femme fatale Alma Mahler, beginning when she was the wife of composer Gustav Mahler . . . Paul Klee, the onlooker, smoking his pipe, observing Bauhaus dances as well as his colleagues’ lectures from the back of the room . . . the cook who invented recipes and threw together his limited ingredients with the same spontaneity, sense of proportion, and fascination that underscored his paintings . . . Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian-born pioneer of abstract painting, guarding a secret tragedy one could never have guessed from his lively paintings, in which he used bold colors not just for their visual vibrancy, but for their “sound” effects . . . Josef Albers, who entered the Bauhaus as a student in 1920 and was one of the seven remaining faculty members when the school was closed by the Gestapo in 1933 . . . Annelise Else Frieda Fleischmann, a Berlin heiress, an intrepid young woman, who later, as Anni Albers, made art the focal point of her existence . . . Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, imperious, decisive, often harsh, an architect who became director—the last—of the Bauhaus, and the person who guided the school’s final days after SS storm troopers raided the premises. Weber captures the life, spirit, and flair with which these geniuses lived, as well as their consuming goal of making art and architecture. A portrait infused with their fulsome embrace of life, their gift for laughter, and the powerful force of their individual artistic personalities.
The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics by
In this highly original book, Hungarian art historian Eva Forgacs examines the development of the Bauhaus school of architecture and applied design by focusing on the idea of the Bauhaus, rather than on its artefacts. What gave this idea its extraordinary powers of survival? Written in 1989, the year of the revolutions, by an author who belongs to the "1968 generation," this study provides a sensitive East European overview of the 1920s--a period so similar to the 1960s, when large-scale utopias, after a few bright years, were so vehemently suppressed. The text has been extensively revised since its original publication in Hungarian in 1991, and an entirely new chapter has been added on the Bauhaus's Russian analogue, VKhUTEMAS, the Moscow academy of industrial art. A unique feature of the book is the comparison of the two academies, as is the author's analytical emphasis on the history of ideas.
The Bauhaus Ideal Then and Now by
The Bauhaus Ideal is an enormously readable history of modernist design, enhanced by the author's black-and-white drawings which both illustrate and elucidate the text. It is a book meant for the lay reader.
Bauhaus Women: Art, Handicraft, Design by
The first monograph on the female painters, photographers, architects, sculptors, and designers of the vanguard Bauhaus School, who helped shape the cultural history of the twentieth century. This monograph celebrates the work of twenty women artists who created in the teaching, workshop, and production branches of the Bauhaus--women whose names, masterpieces, and extraordinary lives have only gradually become known to us. Recognized figures such as Anni Albers--the first textile artist to be exhibited at the MoMA--and Marianne Brandt--whose elegant geometric tableware have become classic Alessi designs--are showcased alongside previously unknown artists such as Gertrud Grunow, who taught "Harmonizing Science"; Helene Börner, who led the textile workshop; and Ilse Fehling, a sculptor and the most sought-after set and costume designer of her generation. Founded in 1919, the Bauhaus and most of its students were poor and lacking in just about everything. What it did have, however, was an abundance of enthusiasm, talent, and innovative creativity. Furthermore, over half of those seeking to enroll at the school were women. This tornado of the "fairer sex" was initially seen as a threat, and the weaving mill was quickly turned into a separate "women's facility." Nevertheless, the mill became a hotbed of groundbreaking production, whose impact far surpassed national borders, as demonstrated by the international acclaim of photographers Lucia Moholy, Florence Henri, and Grete Stern.
The Beribboned Bomb: The Image of Woman in Male Surrealist Art by
Surrealism was ostensibly directed at the emancipation of the human spirit, but it represented only male aspirations and fantasies until a number of women artists began to redefine its agenda in the later 1930s.The Beribboned Bomb: The Image of Woman in Male Surrealist Art addresses the former, using a "thick description" of the historically specific circumstances which required the male Surrealists to manufacture a sexual reputation of narcissism and misogyny. These circumstances were determined by "hegemonic masculinity," an ideological construct which had little to do with individual masculinities. In male Surrealism, the "beribboned bomb" signified something both attractive and volatile, a specific instance of the Surrealist principle of convulsive beauty. In hegemonic masculinity, similar devices served as metaphors of the sexuality all men were supposed to possess. The intersection of these two axes produced an imagery of unrepentant violence.
Brancusi by
A definitive book on the work of Constantin Brancusi, featuring one of the most complete collections of Brancusi's work in one volume. Author Radu Varia, one of the world's foremost experts on Brancusi, illuminates a fascinating discussion on Brancusi's works, influences, and inspirations with hundreds of great photographs. Included are an exploration of the inspirations for Brancusi's work, as well as a presentation and discussion of the complex of works at Targu-Jiu, Romania.
A Companion to Dada and Surrealism by
This excellent overview of new research on Dada and Surrealism blends expert synthesis of the latest scholarship with completely new research, offering historical coverage as well as in-depth discussion of thematic areas ranging from criminality to gender. This book provides an excellent overview of new research on Dada and Surrealism from some of the finest established and up-and-coming scholars in the field Offers historical coverage as well as in-depth discussion of thematic areas ranging from criminality to gender One of the first studies to produce global coverage of the two movements, it also includes a section dealing with the critical and cultural aftermath of Dada and Surrealism in the later twentieth century Dada and Surrealism are arguably the most popular areas of modern art, both in the academic and public spheres
Concerning the Spiritual--And the Concrete--in Kandinsky's Art by
This book examines the art and writings of Wassily Kandinsky, who is widely regarded as one of the first artists to produce non-representational paintings. Crucial to an understanding of Kandinsky's intentions is On the Spiritual in Art, the celebrated essay he published in 1911. Where most scholars have taken its repeated references to "spirit" as signaling quasi-religious or mystical concerns, Florman argues instead that Kandinsky's primary frame of reference was G.W.F. Hegel's Aesthetics, in which art had similarly been presented as a vehicle for the developing self-consciousness of spirit (or Geist, in German). In addition to close readings of Kandinsky's writings, the book also includes a discussion of a 1936 essay on the artist's paintings written by his own nephew, philosopher Alexandre Kojève, the foremost Hegel scholar in France at that time. It also provides detailed analyses of individual paintings by Kandinsky, demonstrating how the development of his oeuvre challenges Hegel's views on modern art, yet operates in much the same manner as does Hegel's philosophical system. Through the work of a single, crucial artist, Florman presents a radical new account of why painting turned to abstraction in the early years of the twentieth century.
Constantin Brancusi by
This volume in the Modern Masters series is an important and perceptive study of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi, whose arresting forms have exerted a powerful impact on the art of this century. By incisively evaluating the diverse influences that channeled into the artist's work -- including his academic training and brief apprenticeship with Auguste Rodin, the folk art and architecture of his native Romania, Cubism, and African art -- Eric Shanes has produced an insightful study that reveals how this complex artist achieved the expressive simplicity of his innovative sculptures. An extensive "Notes on Technique" section, illustrated with evocative views of the artist's studio, illuminates Brancusi's methods of working in all media, including photography, which he used to record his own ideas about how his sculpture should be seen. The many photographs by Brancusi are complemented by sensitive color illustrations that capture the essence of his art. Written with a clarity of prose that well serves the clarity of the sculptor's own work, this much-needed book presents the fascinating story of a profoundly influential artist. About the Modern Masters series: With informative, enjoyable texts and over 100 illustrations -- approximately 48 in full color -- this innovative series offers a fresh look at the most creative and influential artists of the postwar era. The authors are highly respected art historians and critics chosen for their ability to think clearly and write well. Each handsomely designed volume presents a thorough survey of the artist's life and work, as well as statements by the artist, an illustrated chapter on technique, a chronology, lists of exhibitions and public collections, an annotated bibliography, and an index. Every art lover, from the casual museumgoer to the serious student, teacher, critic, or curator, will be eager to collect these Modern Masters. And with such a low price, they can afford to collect them all.
Constantin Brancusi by
Acknowledged as one of the major sculptors and avant-garde artists of the twentieth century, Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) was also one of the most elusive, despite his fame. His mysterious nature was not only due to his upbringing in Romania--which, at the time, was still regarded by much of Europe as a backward country haunted by vampires and werewolves--but also because Brancusi was aware that myth and an aura of otherness appealed to the public. His self-mythology remained intact until the publication of Brancusi in 1986 by Romanian artists Alexandre Istrati and Natalia Dumitresco, who made available a small selection of the archive of Brancusi's correspondence. And in 2003, a comprehensive catalogue, which made the bulk of Brancusi's private correspondence public for the first time, was published by the Centre Pompidou to accompany a retrospective on Brancusi's work. In Constantin Brancusi, Sanda Miller employs these extensive new resources to better assess Brancusi's life and work in relationship to each other, providing valuable and innovative insights into his relationships with friends, collectors, dealers and lovers. Miller's perceptive book allows Brancusi to finally take his rightful place among the most important of the intellectual personalities who shaped twentieth-century modernism.
Conversations with Mies Van der Rohe by
It has been said that modernist legend Mies van der Rohe's thirty years spent working in America reflected his mostconsistent and mature efforts toward achieving his goal of a new architecture for the twentieth century. Focusing on this American period,Conversations with Mies van der Rohe, the latest addition to our Conversations series, gives fresh credence to this claim by presenting the architect's most important design concerns in his own words. In this collectionof interviews Mies talks freely about his relationship with clients, the common language he aimed for in his architecturalprojects, the influences on his work, and the synthesis of architecture and technology that he advanced in his designs and built works. Conversations with Mies van der Rohe makes an important contribution to the corpus of Mies scholarship. It presents a vivid picture of a master of modernism, bringing his artistic biography to a close while completing the scope of his style in terms of techniques, scale, use of materials, and typology. An essay by Iaki balos provides a context for these interviews and looks at Mies's legacy from a contemporary perspective.
Cubism by
Deconstructing perspective with Picasso and peers. Pioneered by Picasso and Braque, Cubism was the first avant-garde art movement of the 20th century. Heavily influenced by the stark power of African and Native American art and sculpture, it deconstructed conventions of viewpoint and perspective, revolutionizing painting and western art in general. With its flattened, geometric shapes, overlapping, simplified forms and fragmented spatial planes, Cubism became one of the most influential and far-reaching movements in modern art. This book explains the history and theory behind Cubism, examining the work of its prime movers, and those whose work built upon it. Featured artists: Pablo Picasso, Edmond Fortier, Paul Cezanne, George Braque, Henri Le Fauconnier, Jean Metzinger, Fernand Leger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Henri Laurens, Salvador Dali, Brassai, Robert Delaunay, Raymond Duchamp-Villon.
Cubism by
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: five young women that changed modern art forever. Faces seen simultaneously from the front and in profile, angular bodies whose once voluptuous feminine forms disappear behind asymmetric lines-with this painting, Picasso revolutionised the entire history of painting. Cubism was thus born in 1907. Transforming natural forms into cylinders and cubes, painters like Juan Gris and Robert Delaunay, driven by Braque and Picasso, imposed a new vision upon the world, in total opposition to the principles of the Impressionists. Largely diffused in Europe, Cubism developed rapidly in successive phases that brought art history to all the richness of the 20th century: from the futurism of Boccioni to the abstraction of Kandinsky, from the suprematism of Malevich to the constructivism of Tatlin. Linking the core text of Guillaume Apollinaire with the studies of Dr. Dorothea Eimert, this work offers a new interpretation of modernity's crucial moment, and permits the reader to rediscover, through their biographies, the principal representatives of the movement.
Dada's Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp by
In this provocative and stimulating book, David Hopkins addresses the homosocial structures in Dada and Surrealist art with an eye to their relevance to current artistic and theoretical debate. Bestriding the book is the pivotal figure of the artist Marcel Duchamp, who was at the center of various groups of artistic and literary figures--predominantly male--in Europe and America. And at the heart of the investigation are Duchamp's relationships with these men, the various interactions of those within the groups, and the impact of this type of male camaraderie on the artworks they produced. Hopkins looks at specific moments in the careers of Duchamp and some of his associates--Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Max Ernst and André Breton--and discusses in detail the reception of Duchamp's ideas in the post-war period. He goes on to trace the influence of the homosocial nature of Surrealism and Dada on the art world from the 1950s to the work of contemporary male and female artists.
DADA, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect by
This book deals with the early intellectual reception of the cinema and the manner in which art theorists, philosophers, cultural theorists, and especially artists of the first decades of the twentieth century responded to its advent. While the idea persists that early writers on film were troubled by the cinema's lowly form, this work proposes that there was another, largely unrecognized, strain in the reception of it. Far from anxious about film's provenance in popular entertainment, some writers and artists proclaimed that the cinema was the most important art for the moderns, as it exemplified the vibrancy of contemporary life. This view of the cinema was especially common among those whose commitments were to advanced artistic practices. Their notions about how to recast the art media (or the forms forged from those media's materials) and the urgency of doing so formed the principal part of the conceptual core of the artistic programs advanced by the vanguard art movements of the first half of the twentieth century. This book, a companion to the author's previous, Harmony & Dissent, examines the Dada and Surrealist movements as responses to the advent of the cinema.
Dada 1916 in Theory: Practices of Critical Resistance by 
Dada: Art and Anti-art by
'Where and how Dada began is almost as difficult to determine as Homer's birthplace', writes Hans Richter, the artist and film-maker closely associated with this radical and transforming movement from its earliest days. Here he records and traces Dada's history, from its inception in about 1916 in wartime Zurich, to its collapse in Paris in 1922 when many of its members were to join the Surrealist movement, down to the present day when its spirit re-emerged first in the 1960s with, for example, Pop Art.This absorbing eye witness narrative is greatly enlivened by extensive use of Dada documents, illustrations and a variety of texts by fellow Dadaists. It is a unique document of the movement, whether in Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Paris or New York. The complex relationships and contributions of, among others, Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Picabia, Arp, Schwitters, Hausmann, Duchamp, Ernst and Man Ray, are vividly brought to life.
Dada and Beyond: Volume 1, Dada Discourses by
This collection of critical essays celebrates the subversive and challenging creativity of the Dada movement, born in pacifist Zurich in 1916 in violent reaction to the First World War. It examines the collective and individual activities that took place under the name of Dada in Zurich, Cologne, Berlin, Paris, New York and Barcelona, and explores the various creative forms employed, including text, collage, photomontage, objects, dance, performance and film. The authors suggest new ways of understanding the work of the most famous Dadaists, while also casting light on the contribution of hitherto neglected figures. "Dada was a bomb", declared Max Ernst in an interview in 1958. "Can you imagine anyone, almost half a century after the explosion of a bomb, trying to collect its fragments and stick them together in order to display them?" The aim of this volume is not to reconstitute the bomb, but to analyse some of its explosive effects and after-effects that continue to resonate nearly a century later. Far from attempting to reduce Dada to a homogeneous movement, or to define a unifying principle beneath and beyond the multiple directions taken by Dadaists, this collection aims to respect the diversity and heterogeneity of the movement's collective activities as well as the specificity of its individual actors.
Dada and Surrealism by
The avant-garde movements of Dada and Surrealism continue to have a huge influence on cultural practice, especially in contemporary art, with its obsession with sexuality, fetishism, and shock tactics. In this new treatment of the subject, Hopkins focuses on the many debates surrounding thesemovements: the Marquis de Sade's Surrealist deification, issues of quality (How good is Dali?), the idea of the 'readymade', attitudes towards the city, the impact of Freud, attitudes to women, fetishism, and primitivism. The international nature of these movements is examined, covering the citiesof Zurich, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Barcelona, Paris, London, and recenlty discovered examples in Eastern Europe.Hopkins explores the huge range of media employed by both Dada and Surrealism (collage, painting, found objects, performance art, photography, film) , whilst at the same time establishing the aesthetic differences between the movements. He also examines the Dadaist obsession with thebody-as-mechanism in relation to the Surrealists' return to the fetishized/eroticized body.
Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-garde by
How Dada is to break its cultural accommodation and containment today necessitates thinking the historical instances through revised application of critical and theoretical models. The volume Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-Gardemoves precisely by this motive, bringing together writings which insist upon the continuity of the early twentieth-century moment now at the start of the twenty-first. Engaging the complex and contradictory nature of Dada strategies, instanced in the linguistic gaming and performativity of the movement's initial formation, and subsequently isolating the specific from the general with essays focusing on Ball, Tzara, Serner, Hausmann, Dix, Heartfield, Schwitters, Baader, Cravan and the exemplary Duchamp, the political philosophy of the avant-garde is brought to bear upon our own contemporary struggle through critical theory to comprehend the cultural usefulness, relevance, validity and effective (or otherwise) oppositionality of Dada's infamous anti-stance.The volume is presented in sections that progressively point towards the expanding complexity of the contemporary engagement with Dada, as what is often exhaustive historical data is forced to rethink, realign and reconfigure itself in response to the analytical rigour and exercise of later twentieth-century animal anarchic thought, the testing and cultural placement of thoughts upon the virtual, and the eventual implications for the once blissfully unproblematic idea of expression. From the opening, provocative proposition that historically Dada may have beenthe falsest of all false paths, the volume rounds to dispute such condemnation as demarcation continues not only of Dada's embeddedness in western culture, but more precisely ofthe location of Dada culture. Ten critical essays - by Cornelius Partsch, John Wall, T. J. Demos, Anna Schaffner, Martin I. Gaughan, Curt Germundson, Stephen C. Foster, Dafydd Jones, Joel Freeman and David Cunningham - are supplemented by the critical bibliography prepared by Timothy Shipe, which documents the past decade of Dada scholarship, and in so doing provides a valuable resource for all those engaged in Dada studies today.
The Dada Painters and Poets by
The Dada Painters and Poets offers the authentic answer to the question "What is Dada?" This incomparable collection of essays, manifestos, and illustrations was prepared by Robert Motherwell with the collaboration of some of the major Dada figures: Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, and Max Ernst among others. Here in their own words and art, the principals of the movement create a composite picture of Dada--its convictions, antics, and spirit. First published in 1951, this treasure trove remains, as Jack D. Flam states in his foreword to the second edition, "the most comprehensive and important anthology of Dada writings in any language, and a fascinating and very readable book." It contains every major text on the Dada movement, including retrospective studies, personal memoirs, and prime examples. The illustrations range from photos of participants, in characteristic Dadaist attitudes, to facsimiles of their productions.
Dada Presentism: An Essay on Art and History by
Dada is often celebrated for its strategies of shock and opposition, but in Dada Presentism, Maria Stavrinaki provides a new picture of Dada art and writings as a lucid reflection on history and the role of art within it. The original (Berlin-based) Dadaists' acute historical consciousness and their modern experience of time, she contends, anticipated the formulations of major historians such as Reinhart Koselleck and, more recently, François Hartog. The book explores Dada temporalities and concepts of history in works of art, artistic discourse, and in the photographs of the Berlin Dada movement. These photographs--including the famous one of the First International Dada Fair--are presented not as simple, transparent documents, but as formal deployments conforming to a very concrete theory of history. This approach allows Stavrinaki to link Dada to more contemporary artistic movements and practices interested in history and the archive. At the same time, she investigates what seems to be a real oxymoron of the movement: its simultaneous claim to the ephemeral and its compulsive writing of its own history. In this way, Dada Presentism also interrogates the limits between history and fiction.
Dali: The Salvador Dali Museum Collection by
Covering some of the major works in the Salvador Dali Museum, including more than 160 oil paintings, drawings and watercolours, this book presents an overview of the career of the controversial surrealist artist, from the 1920s to the 1970s.
Dali and Postmodernism: This is not an Essence by
Demonstrates that Dali's Surrealism anticipates postmodern tactics, and inaugurates "New Dali Studies" by offering an original interpretation of his relationship with the Surrealist canon.
Dalí by
Painter, designer, creator of bizarre objects, author and film maker, Dalí became the most famous of the Surrealists. Buñuel, Lorca, Picasso and Breton all had a great influence on his career. Dalí's film, An Andalusian Dog, produced with Buñuel, marked his official entry into the tightly-knit group of Parisian Surrealists, where he met Gala, the woman who became his lifelong companion and his source of inspiration. But his relationship soon deteriorated until his final rift with André Breton in 1939. Nevertheless Dalí's art remained surrealist in its philosophy and expression and a prime example of his freshness, humour and exploration of the subconscious mind. Throughout his life, Dalí was a genius at self-promotion, creating and maintaining his reputation as a mythical figure.
Decentring the Avant-Garde by
Decentring the Avant-Garde presents a collection of articles dealing with the topography of the avant-garde. The focus is on different responses to avant-garde aesthetics in regions traditionally depicted as cultural, geographical and linguistic peripheries. Avant-garde activities in the periphery have to date mostly been described in terms of a passive reception of new artistic trends and currents originating in cultural centres such as Paris or Berlin. Contesting this traditional view, Decentring the Avant-Garde highlights the importance of analysing the avant-garde in the periphery in terms of an active appropriation of avant-garde aesthetics within different cultural, ideological and historical settings. A broad collection of case studies discusses the activities of movements and artists in various regions in Europe and beyond. The result is a new topographical model of the international avant-garde and its cultural practices.
Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-garde in Nazi Germany by
A volume which documents the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition mounted by the Nazis in 1937 as part of their antimodernist policy. More than 150 of the surviving masterworks from the original show are collected and illustrated in this book.
Dessau Bauhaus Building, 1926-1999 by
With the Bauhaus in Dessau, Water Gropius created a building in 1925/26 that represented a "demonstration of architectural Modernism": (Wolfgang Pehnt). During the few years of its original use as a school with studios, until it was closed down by the Nazis in 1932, it had also become a center of crystallization for the creative forces of its times. Today, the Dessau Bauhaus Foundation again makes the famous building, which has been undergoing extensive restoration since 1997, a center for cultural activities: numerous projects and events at the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the Bauhaus' foundation in Weimar (1999) and the EXPO 2000 will provide the building with even more public attention. The book documents all phases of the Bauhaus Building's history, use and constructs changes. The authors look at its meaning for contemporary architecture, culture and politics, and describe its history during the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the GDR and up to the present. The themes range from the first architectural design to the future of the Bauhaus as a monument. With contributions by members of the Dessau Bauhaus as well as by independent specialists, and with a picture documentation that also goes back to unpublished materials from the Bauhaus Foundation archives, this multifaceted book represents the new standard volume on the Bauhaus Building.
De Stijl by
The ideas that later had such a marked influence on the architecture of Walter Gropius and others of the Bauhaus movement, and subsequently on commercial art and graphic design, were first advocated by the Dutch magazine De Stijl.
De Stijl: 1917-1931 by
Here is the essential book on De Stijl, one of the longest lived and most influential of modern art movements. H. L. C. Jaffeacute; recounts the history of this abstract movement; explains its artistic goals and practice; delineates its utopian ideology; and describes the special qualities of De Stijl painting, sculpture, architecture, and design. Jaffeacute; charts the evolution of the movement from its beginning in 1917 with the founding of the journal De Stijl. He locates the philosophical origins of the artistic program, which put aside representation of nature and confined itself to "pure" forms of expression: vertical and horizontal lines and the primary colors--yellow, blue, red--against white, black, and gray. He describes the roles of Ban Doesburg, De Stijl's driving force, and Mondrian, its leading exponent; the application of its principles to design and architecture; and the involvement of sculptors Arp and Brancusi. He places De Stijl in relation to other abstract arts and demonstrates its wide range of influence. Throughout Jaffeacute; quotes extensively from the writings of the De Stijl group, allowing the artists themselves to describe their aims and methods; a complete forty-page pamphlet by Mondrian, Art and Life (1931) is appended.
De Stijl and Dutch Modernism by
De Stijl was the title of a magazine founded in the Netherlands in 1917 and is now used to identify the abstract art and functional architecture of its major contributors: Mondrian, Van Doesburg, Van der Leck, Oud, Wils and Rietveld. This book is the first to emphasize the local context of De Stijl and explore its relationship to the distinctive character of Dutch modernism. Examines the connection between debates concerning abstraction in painting and spatiality in architecture and contemporary developments in the fields of urban planning, advertising, interior design and exhibition design. Describes the interaction between the world of mass culture and the fine arts.
Drawing on Art: Duchamp and Company by
How Duchamp and his collaborators creatively challenged the meaning of art and authorship
Duchamp and the Aesthetics of Chance: Art as Experiment by
Marcel Duchamp is often viewed as an "artist-engineer-scientist," a kind of rationalist who relied heavily on the ideas of the French mathematician and philosopher Henri Poincar#65533;. Yet a complete portrait of Duchamp and his multiple influences draws a different picture. In his 3 Standard Stoppages (1913-1914), a work that uses chance as an artistic medium, we see how far Duchamp subverted scientism in favor of a radical individualistic aesthetic and experimental vision. Unlike the Dadaists, Duchamp did more than dismiss or negate the authority of science. He pushed scientific rationalism to the point where its claims broke down and alternative truths were allowed to emerge. With humor and irony, Duchamp undertook a method of artistic research, reflection, and visual thought that focused less on beauty than on the notion of the "possible." He became a passionate advocate of the power of invention and thinking things that had never been thought before. The 3 Standard Stoppages is the ultimate realization of the play between chance and dimension, visibility and invisibility, high and low art, and art and anti-art. Situating Duchamp firmly within the literature and philosophy of his time, Herbert Molderings recaptures the spirit of a frequently misread artist-and his thrilling aesthetic of chance.
Embattled Avant-gardes: Modernism's Resistance to Commodity Culture in Europe by 
Europa! Europa: The Avant-garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent by
The first volume of the new series "European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies" focuses on the relation between the avant-garde, modernism and Europe. It combines interdisciplinary and intermedial research on experimental aesthetics and poetics. The essays, written by experts from more than fifteen countries, seek to bring out the complexity of the European avant-garde and modernism by relating it to Europe's intricate history, multiculturalism and multilingualism. They aim to inquire into the divergent cultural views on Europe taking shape in avant-garde and modernist practices and to chart a composite image of the "other Europe(s)" that have emerged from the (contemporary) avant-garde and experimental modernism. How did the avant-garde and modernism in (and outside) Europe give shape to local, national and pan-European forms of identity and community? To what extent does the transnational exchange and cross-fertilisation of aesthetic tendencies illustrate the well-rehearsed claim that the avant-gardes form a typically European phenomenon? Dealing with canonised as well as lesser known exponents of modernism and the avant-garde throughout Europe, this book will appeal to all those interested in European cultural, literary and art history.
Exiles + Emigres: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler by
Published in conjunction with a travelling exhibition opening in February 1997 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this book traces the lives and work of 23 painters, sculptors, photographers and architects exiled from their homelands during the 12 years of Nazi rule in Europe.
The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp by
Exile as the dominant fact of Marcel Duchamp's life and artistic practice: how the "spirit of expatriation" and sense of dislocation infused the mobile objects and disjunctive spaces of Duchamp's readymades and experimental exhibition installations. Marcel Duchamp was a famous expatriate, a wanderer, living and working in Paris, New York, and Buenos Aires and escaping from each in turn. But exile, argues T. J. Demos in this innovative reading, is more than a fact in Duchamp's biography. Exile--in the artist's own words, a "spirit of expatriation"--infuses Duchamp's entire artistic practice.. Duchamp's readymade constructions, his installations for surrealist exhibitions in Paris and New York, and his "portable museum" (the suggestively named La boîte-en-valise), Demos writes, all manifest, define, and exploit the terms of exile in multiple ways. Created while the artist was living variously in New York, Buenos Aires, and occupied France during the global catastrophes of war and fascism, these works express the anguish of displacement and celebrate the freedom of geopolitical homelessness. The "portable museum," a suitcase containing miniature reproductions of Duchamp's works, for example, represented a complex meditation--both critical and joyful--on modern art's tendency toward itinerancy, whereas Duchamp's 1942 installation design entangling a New York gallery in a mile of string announced the dislocated status that many exiled surrealists wished to forget. Duchamp's exile, writes Demos, defines a new ethics of independent life in the modern age of nationalism and advanced capitalism, offering a precursor to our own globalized world of nomadic subjects and dispersed experience.
Expressionism by
Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Emil Nolde, E.-L. Kirchner,
Expressionism and Film by
Expressionism and Film, originally published in German in 1926, is not only a classic of film history, but also an important work from the early phase of modern media history. Written with analytical brilliance and historical vision by a well-known contemporary of the expressionist movement, it captures Expressionism at the time of its impending conclusion--as an intersection of world view, resoluteness of form, and medial transition. Though one of the most frequently-cited works of Weimar culture, Kurtz's groundbreaking work, which is on a par with Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler and Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen, has never been published in English. Its relevance and historical contexts are analyzed in a concise afterword by the Swiss scholars Christian Kiening and Ulrich Johannes Beil.
Expressionism in Germany and France: From van Gogh to Kandinsky by
This groundbreaking examination of the cultural exchange between early 20th century French and German artists illuminates new ways of understanding the development of Expressionism. Although the Expressionist movement is widely considered to have arisen out of a German aesthetic, it was actually as much a result of German artists' exposure to artists living and working in France, such as van Gogh, Seurat, Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Braque. In fact, in its early days, Expressionism was assigned no specific nationality at all. This fascinating book focuses on the key exhibitions, galleries, and museum directors that helped disseminate styles and techniques of revolutionary French artists throughout Germany. Included here are French masterpieces seen not only by German artists in Paris but also in important galleries, exhibitions, and private collections in Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Weimar, and other cities. More than 100 paintings and works on paper are grouped to encourage an understanding of artistic influence and interchange. The volume also reflects new scholarship on issues of French-German relations and contributes to our understanding of the ways the visual arts are influenced by ideas of national identity and cultural heritage. 200 illustrations
Expressionism in the Cinema by
An innovative and wide-ranging collection, Expressionism in Cinema re-canonizes the classical Expressionist aesthetic, extending the critical and historical discussion beyond pre-existing scholarship into comparative and interdisciplinary areas of film research that reach across nationalboundaries.
The Expressionists by
This volume describes the movement that marked the deliberate abandonment of Impressionism in favour of greatly simplified outlines and very strong colour. The principal exponents were German and their work subsequently fell foul of the Third Reich, leading to the exile of many of the artists.
Expressionist Utopias: Paradise, Metropolis, Architectural Fantasy by
The notion of utopia exists in every culture, capturing shared dreams and common goals. This book--prepared to accompany the exhibition Expressionist Utopias mounted at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1993--explores how the optimistic themes of utopia and fantasy sustained faith among artists and architects in the power of art to shape a better world during the tumultuous World War I era in Germany. The exhibition's curator, Timothy O. Benson along with David Frisby, Reinhold Heller, Anton Kaes, Wolf Prix, and Iain Boyd White present the diverse manifestations of the utopia metaphor in its progression throughout Expressionism from Arcadian to manmade utopias. This work includes a new essay and an interview by Edward Dimenberg with Wolf Prix on the spectacular installation created for the exhibition by the Viennese architectural firm Coop Himmelblau.
The Fauves by
Born at the dawn of the 20th century, Fauvism burst onto the artistic scene at the 1905 Salon d'Automne with great controversy by throwing bright, vibrant colours in the face of artistic convention. Fuelled by change, artists like Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck searched for a new chromatic language by using colour out of its habitual context. Freed from the strict technique advocated by the École des Beaux-Arts, they used blocky colours as their main resource, saturating their stunning paintings.
The Fauves: The Reign of Colour: Matisse, Derain, Van Dongen, Braque, Dufy among Others by
Documents the first avant-garde movement of the 20th century, its pioneers (Matisse, Picasso, Braque), and the stunning effects of its vivid use of bold color.
Fernand Leger by
Fernand Lager is the only major modern artist to choose modernity itself as his subject. From his early series Contrastes de formes of 1913-14--the first fully abstract works to emerge from Cubism--through his paintings of construction workers from the late 1940s and early 1950s, his enduring subject was the pulse and dynamism of everyday life. Lager saw the 20th century environment as a "state of contrasts," a condition that he translated into art through forceful juxtaposition of shape, color, and line. His attempt to reconcile the formal concerns of artmaking with issues of social responsibility continues to be relevant to the art world of today. Accompanying texts recount Lager's experience of and interest in America and America's interest in him; explore refractions of Lager's interests in the work of more recent artists; and discuss Lager's ambition to make an art reflecting the "new visual state" of modern life. An illustrated chronology tells the story of the artist's life, focusing on his time in America, the plate section is complemented by a series of short essays tracing the formal and thematic developments in his art, and a selected bibliography and detailed exhibition history complete the book.This book was published to accompany the 1998 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Franz Marc by
Condemned by the Nazis as a degenerate artist, Franz Marc (1880-1916) was a German painter whose stark linearity and emotive use of color eloquently expressed the pain and trauma of war. In work such as his celebrated Fate of the Animals, Marc created a raw emotional expression of primitive violence which he called a premonition of the war which would eventually be the cause of his own untimely death at the age of 36.
Futurism by
In 1909, F.T. Marinetti published his incendiary Futurist Manifesto, proclaiming, We stand on the last promontory of the centuries and There, on the earth, the earliest dawn Intent on delivering Italy from its fetid cancer of professors, archaeologists, tour guides, and antiquarians, the Futurists imagined that art, architecture, literature, and music would function like a machine, transforming the world rather than merely reflecting it. But within a decade, Futurism's utopian ambitions were being wedded to Fascist politics, an alliance that would tragically mar its reputation in the century to follow. Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of Futurism, this is the most complete anthology of Futurist manifestos, poems, plays, and images ever to bepublished in English, spanning from 1909 to 1944. Now, amidst another era of unprecedented technological change and cultural crisis, is a pivotal moment to reevaluate Futurism and its haunting legacy for Western civilization.
Futurism by
Italian Futurism proclaimed the bankruptcy of an artistic culture that clung to the forms and values of the past. The movement was launched in 1909 and a group of spectacular talents set out to revolutionize human culture. It was a young man's movement, eventually overtaken by war and Fascism.
Futurism Basic Art by
Inspired by the development of Cubism, the Futurist movement was founded in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, along with painters Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carr?, and Gino Severini. The school, which celebrated technology and the mechanical era, was comprised of painters, sculptors, designers, architects, and writers. Motion and machines were two main themes of this movement, which attacked the bastions of establishment and sparked controversy by its glorification of war and support of Fascism. Experimenting with movement, and speed, and abstract light and color, the Futurists developed approaches and techniques that were revolutionary at the time, and in retrospect one can see that the Futurists influenced other avant-garde art movements, most notably Russian Constructivism.
The Futurist Files: Avant-Garde, Politics, and Ideology in Russia, 1905-1930 by
Futurism was Russia's first avant-garde movement. Gatecrashing the Russian public sphere in the early twentieth century, the movement called for the destruction of everything old, so that the past could not hinder the creation of a new, modern society. Over the next two decades, the protagonists of Russian Futurism pursued their goal of modernizing human experience through radical art. The success of this mission has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Critics have often characterized Russian Futurism as an expression of utopian daydreaming by young artists who were unrealistic in their visions of Soviet society and naïve in their comprehension of the Bolshevik political agenda. By tracing the political and ideological evolution of Russian Futurism between 1905 and 1930, Iva Glisic challenges this view, demonstrating that Futurism took a calculated and systematic approach to its contemporary socio-political reality. This approach ultimately allowed Russia's Futurists to devise a unique artistic practice that would later become an integral element of the distinctly Soviet cultural paradigm. Drawing upon a unique combination of archival materials and employing a theoretical framework inspired by the works of philosophers such as Lewis Mumford, Karl Mannheim, Ernst Bloch, Fred Polak, and Slavoj ?i?ek, The Futurist Files presents Futurists not as blinded idealists, but rather as active and judicious participants in the larger project of building a modern Soviet consciousness. This fascinating study ultimately stands as a reminder that while radical ideas are often dismissed as utopian, and impossible, they did?and can?have a critical role in driving social change. It will be of interest to art historians, cultural historians, and scholars and students of Russian history.
German Art from Beckmann to Richter by
The dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 brought the division of Germany to an end. This book -- a survey of German art between 1945 and 1990 -- compares how art mirrored the different political circumstances in the two German states during this period. It reveals for the first time how artists from East and West Germany responded to the Nazi dictatorship, the Holocaust and the world war, and various political developments, showing that the dividing line between East and West was much less strict than has been imagined. Authorities on German art discuss major works by such artists as Max Beckmann, Max Ernst, Otto Dix, Josef Albers, Georg Baselitz, Eva Hesse, Gerhard Richter, Josef Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Hanne Darboven, and others. The book also includes biographies of the artists. This handsome book is the catalogue for the exhibition "Deutschlandbilder" to be held at the 47 Berliner Festwochen from September 1997 until January 1998.
German Expressionism: Art and Society by 
German Expressionism and the Messianism of a Generation by
This book reads messianic expectation as the defining characteristic of German culture in the first decades of the twentieth century. It has long been accepted that the Expressionist movement in Germany was infused with a thoroughly messianic strain. Here, with unprecedented detail and focus, that strain is traced through the work of four important Expressionist playwrights: Ernst Barlach, Georg Kaiser, Ernst Toller and Franz Werfel. Moreover, these dramatists are brought into new and sustained dialogues with the theorists and philosophers of messianism who were their contemporaries: Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Martin Buber, Hermann Cohen, Gershom Scholem. In arguing, for example, that concepts like Bloch's utopian self-encounter (Selbstbegegnung) and Benjamin's messianic now-time (Jetztzeit) reappear as the framework for Expressionism's staging of collective redemption in a new age, Anderson forges a previously underappreciated link in the study of Central European thought in the early twentieth century.
Henri Matisse by
A perfect facsimile of Jazz, a 20th century masterpiece This two-volume edition includes a perfect facsimile of Matisse's seminal cut-out work: Jazz. At last, readers can experience Jazz as if holding the 1947 original. The reputation of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) as the most important artist of the modern era is rivaled only by Picasso--who himself said, "All things considered, there is only Matisse." Towards the end of his monumental career as a painter, sculptor, and lithographer, an elderly, sickly Matisse was unable to stand and use a paintbrush. So at almost 80 years of age, he developed a new technique: he drew shapes on colored paper, cut them out and pasted them together. These gouaches decoup#65533;es (gouache cut-outs) represented a revolution in modern art, yet their simplicity was dismissed by many critics as the folly of a senile old man. Later critics realized that Matisse had found a brilliant solution to the age-old conflict between line and color--one that would profoundly influence generations of artists to come. Printed in exactly the same colors, using paper and inks similar to the 1947 edition, the facsimile volume allows readers to experience Jazz in its original, unbound form. * Printed in 18 colors on a small offset press, 4 pages at a time, to obtain the highest fidelity to the original * Printed on Old Mill in 190 g/m#65533; from Italian paper mill Fedrigoni. This paper is of archival quality and has a felt-like softness, much like handmade paper * As with the original, this reprint is unbound and folded in signatures of 4 pages. It is protected by a French folded jacket and a hard-backed cover The second volume provides a thorough historical context to Matisse's cut-outs, tracing their genesis in his 1930 trip to Tahiti, through to his final years in Nice. Also included are other pivotal works from his later career, including his contributions to Verve magazine and his exquisite decoration of the Vence Chapel. Includes rare and historic photographs by Matisse taken in Tahiti, as well as photos of Matisse by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassa#65533;, and the filmmaker Murnau. The text is supplemented by quotations from Matisse, Picasso, E. T#65533;riade (the publisher of Jazz and Verve), the poets Louis Aragon, Henri Michaux, and Pierre Reverdy, and Matisse's son-in-law, Georges Duthuit.
Henri Matisse: A Retrospective by 
Henry Moore by
Minimalist bodies, sensual forms The sensual, voluptuous shapes in the work of British sculptor Henry Moore (1889-1986) are the sign of his unmistakable signature style. Often depicting human or human-like forms--especially female--Moore`s sculptures, with their abstract style, brought a distinctive brand of Modernism to fine art. His cast bronze and carved marble sculptures grace the gardens and galleries of the world`s finest museums and have earned him a devoted following. Particularly beloved are his many mother-and-child compositions. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions
Historical Dictionary of Surrealism by
Surrealism was a broad movement, which attracted many adherents. It was organized and quite strictly disciplined, at least until the death of its leader, AndrZ Breton, in 1966. As a consequence, its membership was in a constant state of flux: persons were constantly being admitted and excluded, and often the latter continued to regard themselves as Surrealists. The wide-ranging nature of the Surrealist movement was spread over many countries and many different art forms, including painting, sculpture, cinema, photography, music, theater, and literature, most notably poetry. The Historical Dictionary of Surrealism relates the history of this movement through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 600 cross-referenced dictionary entries on persons, circles, and groups who participated in the movement; a global entry on some of the journals and reviews they produced; and a sampling of major works of art, cinema, and literature.
The History of Futurism by
Futurism began as an artistic and social movement in early twentieth-century Italy. Until now, much of the scholarship available in English has focused only on a single individual or art form. This volume seeks to present a more complete picture of the movement by exploring the history of the movement, the events leading up to the movement, and the lasting impact it has had as well as the individuals involved in it. The History of Futurism: The Precursors, Protagonists, and Legacies addresses the history and legacy of what is generally seen as the founding avante-garde movement of the twentieth century. Geert Buelens, Harald Hendrix, and Monica Jansen have brought together scholarship from an international team of specialists to explore the Futurism movement as a multidisciplinary movement mixing aesthetics, politics, and science with a particular focus on the literature of the movement.
The History of Surrealism by
I believe, Andre Breton said, in the future resolution of the states of dream and reality--in appearance so contradictory--in a sort of absolute reality, or "
International Yearbook of Futurism Studies. Vol. 5, 2015. Special Issue : Women Artists and Futurism by
The special issue of International Yearbook of Futurism Studies for 2015 will investigate the role of Futurism in the oeuvre of a number of Women artists and writers. These include a number of women actively supporting Futurism (e.g. Růžena Zátková, Edyth von Haynau, Olga Rozanova, Eva Kühn), others periodically involved with the movement (e.g. Valentine de Saint Point, Aleksandra Ekster, Mary Swanzy), others again inspired only by certain aspects of the movement (e.g. Natalia Goncharova, Alice Bailly, Giovanna Klien). Several artists operated on the margins of a Futurist inspired aesthetics, but they felt attracted to Futurism because of its support for women artists or because of its innovatory roles in the social and intellectual spheres. Most of the artists covered in Volume 5 (2015) are far from straightforward cases, but exactly because of this they can offer genuinely new insights into a still largely under-researched domain of twentieth-century art and literature. Guiding questions for these investigations are: How did these women come into contact with Futurist ideas? Was it first-hand knowledge (poems, paintings, manifestos etc) or second-hand knowledge (usually newspaper reports or personal conversions with artists who had been in contact with Futurism)? How did the women respond to the (positive or negative) reports? How did this show up in their oeuvre? How did it influence their subsequent, often non-Futurist, career?
Italian Futurism, 1909-1944 by
Published to accompany the exhibition Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe opening at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2014, this catalogue will advance the scholarship and understanding of this influential yet little known twentieth-century artistic movement. As part of the first comprehensive overview of Italian Futurism to be presented in the United States, the multidisciplinary publication examines the historical sweep of the movement from its inception with F. T. Marinetti's Futurist manifesto in 1909 to its demise at the end of World War II. Presenting over 300 works executed between 1909 and 1944, the publication encompasses not only painting and sculpture, but also architecture, design, ceramics, fashion, film, photography, advertising, free-form poetry, publications, music, theatre and performance.
Joan Miró by
For nearly seven decades the ebullient art of Joan Miro (1893-1983), Spanish painter, sculptor, ceramist and mythmaker, has intrigued and enchanted art lovers worldwide. This collection of his writings presents a portrait of the artist in his own words. Miro's notebooks, letters, and interviews reveal the work and life of a brilliant artist revered for his uncanny expression of the subconscious.
Kandinsky by
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter credited as being among the first to truly venture into abstract art. He persisted in expressing his internal world of abstraction despite negative criticism from his peers. He veered away from painting that could be viewed as representational in order to express his emotions, leading to his unique use of colour and form. Although his works received heavy censure at the time, in later years they would become greatly influential.
Kandinsky: Watercolors and Drawings by 
Kandinsky Compositions by
Vasily Kandinsky was among the international vanguard artists who experimented with abstraction in the early years of the 20th century. His most powerful and ambitious works were ten monumental canvases he titled Compositions he painted the first seven in intense succession between 1909 and 1913, and the final three in 1923, 1936, and 1939. Each of these brilliant paintings and their studies explores the sensuous colorism that amateur and specialist alike find so appealing in his art. In the first study devoted to Kandinsky's Compositions as a series, the author unfolds the rich and powerful context of these eloquent images and reveals how their formal principles and iconographical imagery were of almost religious significance to Kandinsky. This book, for the first time, reproduces all ten of the Compositions, along with their studies in oil, watercolor, ink, and pencil. Three of the paintings, which were destroyed during World War II, are repesented through extant photographs.
Kirchner by
The self-appointed "leader" of the artists' group Die Brücke (Bridge), founded in Dresden in 1905, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a key figure in the early development of German Expressionism. His first works show the influence of Impressionism, Post-impressionism and Jugendstil, but by about 1909, Kirchner was painting in a distinctive, expressive manner with bold, loose brushwork, vibrant and non-naturalistic colours and heightened gestures. He worked in the studio from sketches made very rapidly from life, often from moving figures, from scenes of life out in the city or from the Die Brücke group's trips to the countryside. A little later he began making roughly-hewn sculptures from single blocks of wood. Around the time of his move to Berlin, in 1912, Kirchner's style in both painting and his prolific graphic works became more angular, characterized by jagged lines, slender, attenuated forms and often, a greater sense of nervousness. These features can be seen to most powerful effect in his Berlin street scenes. With the outbreak of the First World War, Kirchner became physically weak and prone to anxiety. Conscripted, he was deeply traumatised by his brief experience of military training during the First World War. From 1917 until his death by suicide in 1938, he lived a reclusive, though artistically productive life in the tranquillity of the Swiss Alps, near Davos.
Kurt Schwitters Merzbau by
German artist Kurt Schwitters began constructing the Merzbau, a combination of collage, sculpture, and architecture, in a corner of his studio in Hannover, Germany in 1920. Also called the Cathedral of Erotic Misery, this was Schwitters's private world. It eventually took over his entire living quarters, the apartment above, and part of the yard, and was divided into rooms-the Biedermeier Room, the de Stijl Room, the Goethe Cave, the Mondrian Cave, and the Mies Cave, among others. It was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in 1943. Although the Merzbau is of essential importance in understanding the early Modern Movement, this is the first in-depth study in English of this structure. Elizabeth Burns Gamard discusses its physical evolution and its significance within the artist's oeuvre. She also investigates its larger relation to German Expressionism and romanticism and to critical thought of the time. This book offers an in-depth analysis of a single structure through original documents, drawings, and critical examination of the design process.
Le Corbusier Before le Corbusier: Applied Arts, Architecture, Painting, Photography, 1907-1922 by
In his numerous writings, Le Corbusier remained uncharacteristically silent about his early career. This text examines his nascent years as a designer and architect, focusing on the period from 1907 to 1922 - the year he changed his name from Charles Edouard Jeanneret and established his identity as Le Corbusier. The contributors to the book offer an account of Le Corbusier's formative years and the cultural, intellectual and artistic concerns that absorbed him as a young artist in Switzerland and Paris.
Le Corbusier le Grand
Legitimizing the Artist: Manifesto Writing and European Modernism, 1885-1915 by
In this work Luca Somigli discusses several European artistic movements - decadentism, Italian futurism, vorticism, and imagism - and argues for the centrality of the works of F.T. Marinetti in the transition from a fin de siécle decadent poetics, exemplified by the manifestoes of Anatole Baju, to a properly avant-garde project.
The Life and Masterworks of Salvador Dalí by
Painter, designer, creator of bizarre objects, author and film maker, Dalí became the most famous of the Surrealists. Buñuel, Lorca, Picasso and Breton all had a great influence on his career. Dalí's film, An Andalusian Dog, produced with Buñuel, marked his official entry into the tightly-knit group of Parisian Surrealists, where he met Gala, the woman who became his lifelong companion and his source of inspiration. But his relationship soon deteriorated until his final rift with André Breton in 1939. Nevertheless Dalí's art remained surrealist in its philosophy and expression and a prime example of his freshness, humour and exploration of the subconscious mind. Throughout his life, Dalí was a genius at self-promotion, creating and maintaining his reputation as a mythical figure.
Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí: Forbidden Pleasures and Connected Lives by
Lorca, Bunuel and Dali were, in their respective fields of poetry and theatre, cinema, and painting, three of the most imaginative creative artists of the twentieth century; their impact was felt far beyond the boundaries of their native Spain. But if individually they have been examined by many, their connected lives have rarely been considered. It is these, the ties that bind them, that constitute the subject of this illuminating book. They were born within six years of each other and, as Gwynne Edwards reveals, their childhood circumstances were very similar. Each was affected by a narrow-minded society and an intolerant religious background which equated sex with sin and led all three to experience sexual problems of different kinds: Lorca the guilt and anguish associated with his homosexuality; Bunuel feelings of sexual inhibition; and, Dali virtual impotence. Having met during the 1920s at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, they developed intense personal relationships and channelled their respective obsessions into the cultural forms then prevalent in Europe, in particular Surrealism.Rooted in emotional turmoil, their work - from Lorca's dramatic characters in search of sexual fulfilment, to Bunuel's frustrated men and women, and Dali's potent images of shame and guilt - is highly autobiographical. Their left-wing outrage directed at bourgeois values and the Catholic Church was strongly felt, and in the case of Lorca in particular, was sharpened by the catastrophic Civil War of 1936-9, during the first months of which he was murdered by Franco's fascists. The war hastened Bunuel's departure to France and Mexico and Dali's to New York. Edwards describes how, for the rest of his life, Bunuel clung to his left-wing ideals and made outstanding films, while the increasingly eccentric and money-obsessed Dali embraced Fascism and the Catholic Church, and saw his art go into rapid decline.
Malevich: Journey to Infinity by
Pioneer of geometric abstract art and one of the most important members of the Russian Avant-garde, Malevitch experimented with various modernist styles. In reaction to the influence of Cubism and Futurism on artists in Russia, Malevitch in his art reduced the world of nature to basic elements and colours, such as in his Red Square (1915). He introduced his abstract, non-objective geometric patterns in a style and artistic movement he called Suprematism. One of the important names of the twentieth century, he however turned back to Primitivism once Russia's communist leaders forced him to do so.
Manifestoes of Surrealism by
Presents the essential ideas of the founder of French surrealism
Matisse by
Examines Matisse's impact on modern art as well as examining his career, techniques, aesthetics, and stages of artistic development.
Matisse: A Portrait by 
Matisse and Picasso: The Story of their Rivalry and Friendship by
Matisse and Picasso achieved extraordinary prominence during their lifetimes. They have become cultural icons, standing not only for different kinds of art but also for different ways of living. Matisse, known for his restraint and intense sense of privacy, for his decorum and discretion, created an art that transcended daily life and conveyed a sensuality that inhabited an abstract and ethereal realm of being. In contrast, Picasso became the exemplar of intense emotionality, of theatricality, of art as a kind of autobiographical confession that was often charged with violence and explosive eroticism. In Matisse and Picasso, Jack Flam explores the compelling, competitive, parallel lives of these two artists and their very different attitudes toward the idea of artistic greatness, toward the women they loved, and ultimately toward their confrontations with death.
Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse, the Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954 by
If my story were ever to be written down truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone, wrote Henri Matisse. It is hard to believe today that Matisse, whose exhibitions draw huge crowds worldwide, was once almost universally reviled and ridiculed. His response was neither to protest nor to retreat; he simply pushed on from one innovation to the next, and left the world to draw its own conclusions. Unfortunately, these were generally false and often damaging. Throughout his life and afterward people fantasized about his models and circulated baseless fabrications about his private life. Fifty years after his death, Matisse the Master(the second half of the biography that began with the acclaimedThe Unknown Matisse)shows us the painter as he saw himself. With unprecedented and unrestricted access to his voluminous family correspondence, and other new material in private archives, Hilary Spurling documents a lifetime of desperation and self-doubt exacerbated by Matisse's attempts to counteract the violence and disruption of the twentieth century in paintings that now seem effortlessly serene, radiant, and stable. Here for the first time is the truth about Matisse's models, especially two Russians: his pupil Olga Meerson and the extraordinary Lydia Delectorskaya, who became his studio manager, secretary, and companion in the last two decades of his life. But every woman who played an important part in Matisse's life was remarkable in her own right, not least his beloved daughter Marguerite, whose honesty and courage surmounted all ordeals, including interrogation and torture by the Gestapo in the Second World War. If you have ever wondered how anyone with such a tame public image as Matisse could have painted such rich, powerful, mysteriously moving pictures, let alone produced the radical cut-paper and stained-glass inventions of his last years, here is the answer. They were made by the real Matisse, whose true story has been written down at last from start to finish by his first biographer, Hilary Spurling.
Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism by 
Mies Van der Rohe by
Mies van der Rohe Aquisgran, 1886-Chicago, 1969. Participant and director during the Bauhaus school period, his furniture designs intersect with funtionalist theories that searched for pieces with simplified lines without ornaments, turning the form of furniture into the key aesthetic feature, without adding decorative elements. Among his most characteristic designs stands out the chair Barcelona, created to furnish the German Pavillion in the 1929 Universal Exhibition, in which metallic tubes give way to steel forms. In 1938 he emigrated to the US, where he joined the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mies Van der Rohe by
Studio Paperback monographs on the outstanding architects of the 20th century - concise and informative overviews of the complete works written and edited by noted authors. Each volume contains biographical details and a work chronology.
Mies Van der Rohe by
Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography is a major rewriting and expansion of Franz Schulze’s acclaimed 1985 biography, the first full treatment of the master German-American modern architect. Coauthored with architect Edward Windhorst, this revised edition, three times the length of the original text, features extensive new research and commentary and draws on the best recent work of American and German scholars. The authors’ major new discoveries include the massive transcript of the early-1950s Farnsworth House court case, which discloses for the first time the facts about Mies’s epic battle with his client Edith Farnsworth. Giving voice to dozens of architects who knew and worked with (and sometimes against) Mies, this comprehensive biography tells the compelling story of how Mies and his students and followers created some of the most significant buildings of the twentieth century. "Franz Schulze’s 1985 biography of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe has always been acknowledged as the most comprehensive and thoughtful biography of one of the key figures in twentieth-century architecture. This revised edition with significant new scholarship by its two authors will undoubtedly come to occupy the same position.”--Dietrich Neumann, Brown University
Mies Van der Rohe: The Built Work by
This essential and comprehensive Mies monograph focuses in its analysis on Mies' design intentions: it reconstructs the buildings in their orginal state, examines them from the present day persepctive and rediscovers the inspiring architecture of a great modern master. The book presents eighty of Mies' works in chronological order. Approximately thirty of these works are analyzed in detail in three parts. In the first part, the construction is documented in its built state; for this all the ground plans were redrawn by the author. The second part outlines the changes to the buildings and the third part develops the results of this investigation with regard to their relevance to the contemporaryview of Mies' work.
Mondrian and the Neo-plasticist Utopia by 
Naive Art by
Naive art first became popular at the end of the 19th century. Until that time, this form of expression, created by untrained artists and characterised by spontaneity and simplicity, enjoyed little recognition from professional artists and art critics. Influenced by primitive arts, naive painting is distinguished by the fluidity of its lines, vivacity, and joyful colours, as well as by its rather clean-cut, simple shapes.Naive art counts among it artists: Henri Rousseau, Séraphine de Senlis, André Bauchant, and Camille Bombois. This movement has also found adherents abroad, including such prominent artists as Joan Miró, Guido Vedovato, Niko Pirosmani, and Ivan Generalic.
Neue Sachlichkeit 1918-33: Unity and Diversity of an Art Movement by 
Neue Sachlichkeit and Avant-Garde by
One of the aims of the book is to shed more light on the notion Neue Sachlichkeit in its appearance in a variety of fields as painting, architecture, music, photography and literature, in order to get a clearer idea of its scope. Several contributions will do so by analysing the heterogeneity in the use of the term concerning its function in the fight for recognition in the art-fields around 1930 - in other words, Neue Sachlichkeit will be analysed as a positioning strategy. Especially its participation in the broader discourse on modernity, as well as its international and intermedial dimension will be highlighted, often using the historical avant-garde as point of reference. From this perspective, the present volume wants to be read as a plea for a differentiated description of the many shared aspects and some differences between the avant-garde and Neue Sachlichkeit.
The New Architecture and the Bauhaus by
One of the most important books on the modern movement in architecture, The New Architecture and The Bauhaus poses some of the fundamental problems presented by the relations of art and industry and considers their possible, practical solution. Gropius traces the rise of the New Architecture and the work of the now famous Bauhaus and, with splendid clarity, calls for a new artist and architect educated to new materials and techniques and directly confronting the requirements of the age.
The New Art--The New Life by
When the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) made his first ventures into the realm of nonrepresentational art, he could hardly have imagined the impact his vision would have on twentieth-century art, architecture, and design. Internationally recognized as the leading pioneer of abstract art, the founder of Neo-Plasticism, and the ideological father of the De Stijl movement, Mondrian embodied the spirit of modernism. His unmistakable grids and angular compositions expressed his desire for order and clarity amid the chaos of industrial civilization. This comprehensive collection of his essays, letters, notes, and interviews is arranged chronologically from Mondrian's earliest De Stijl essays up to an interview conducted shortly before his death. The texts are complemented with a chronology, an intimate memoir by his close friend Harry Holtzman, an essay on Mondrian's early writings by Martin S. James, a selective bibliography, and 254 reproductions of Mondrian's paintings,works, by his contemporaries, and photographs of the artist, his family, and friends.The New Art -The New Life is the definitive source for understanding the underlying principles of Mondrian's art and life. Revealed in these writings is the self-denial, discipline, and patience of a man who modified the way we perceive the world.
New Objectivity by
Between the end of World War I and the Nazi assumption of power, Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-1933) functioned as a thriving laboratory of art and culture. As the country experienced unprecedented and often tumultuous social, economic and political upheaval, many artists rejected Expressionism in favour of a new realism to capture this emerging society. Dubbed Neue Sachlichkeit - New Objectivity - its adherents turned a cold eye on the new Germany: its desperate prostitutes and crippled war veterans, its alienated urban landscapes, its decadent underworld where anything was available for a price. Showcasing 150 works by more than 50 artists, this book reflects the full diversity and strategies of this art form. Organised around five thematic sections, it mixes photography, works on paper and painting to bring them into a visual dialogue. Artists such as Otto Dix, George Grosz and Max Beckmann are included alongside figures such as Christian Schad, Alexander Kanoldt, Georg Schrimpf, August Sander, Lotte Jacobi and Aenne Biermann. Also included are numerous essays that examine the politics of New Objectivity and its legacy, the relation of this new realism to international art movements of the time; the context of gender roles and sexuality; and the influence of new technology and consumer goods. Published in association with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. AUTHOR: Stephanie Barron is a Senior Curator and heads the Modern Art department at the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art. Sabine Eckmann is the William T. Kemper Director and Chief Curator of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. 300 colour illustrations
Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life by
An incisive exploration of the still life genre as artists have rediscovered and reshaped it in the 20th century, Objects of Desire proves that despite the century's hostility toward older aesthetic conventions, avant-garde artists of many schools have made of the still life a vital opportunity for invention. From Matisse, Picasso, and Braque to the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Pop artists and finally to contemporary creators like Cindy Sherman and Charles Ray, the still life has hardly led a stolid, stable, or staunch existence. Originally a subject reserved for painting, the genre has progressively invaded the arena of sculpture, its themes reinvented in the provocative assemblages called "readymades," its forms recast continuously into the present. Published to accompany a major 1997 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Objects of Desire traces a radical rethinking of the genre in terms of subject matter and formal invention.
Pablo Picasso, 1881-1914 by
Picasso was born a Spaniard and, so they say, began to draw before he could speak. As an infant he was instinctively attracted to artist''s tools. In early childhood he could spend hours in happy concentration drawing spirals with a sense and meaning known only to himself. At other times, shunning children''s games, he traced his first pictures in the sand. This early self-expression held out promise of a rare gift. Málaga must be mentioned, for it was there, on 25 October 1881, that Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born and it was there that he spent the first ten years of his life. Picasso''s father was a painter and professor at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts. Picasso learnt from him the basics of formal academic art training. Then he studied at the Academy of Arts in Madrid but never finished his degree. Picasso, who was not yet eighteen, had reached the point of his greatest rebelliousness; he repudiated academia''s anemic aesthetics along with realism''s pedestrian prose and, quite naturally, joined those who called themselves modernists, the non-conformist artists and writers, those whom Sabartés called "the élite of Catalan thought" and who were grouped around the artists'' café Els Quatre Gats. During 1899 and 1900 the only subjects Picasso deemed worthy of painting were those which reflected the "final truth"; the transience of human life and the inevitability of death. His early works, ranged under the name of "Blue Period" (1901-1904), consist in blue-tinted paintings influenced by a trip through Spain and the death of his friend, Casagemas. Even though Picasso himself repeatedly insisted on the inner, subjective nature of the Blue Period, its genesis and, especially, the monochromatic blue were for many years explained as merely the results of various aesthetic influences. Between 1905 and 1907, Picasso entered a new phase, called "Rose Period" characterised by a more cheerful style with orange and pink colours. In Gosol, in the summer of 1906 the nude female form assumed an extraordinary importance for Picasso; he equated a depersonalised, aboriginal, simple nakedness with the concept of "woman". The importance that female nudes were to assume as subjects for Picasso in the next few months (in the winter and spring of 1907) came when he developed the composition of the large painting, Les Demoiselles d''Avignon. Just as African art is usually considered the factor leading to the development of Picasso''s classic aesthetics in 1907, the lessons of Cézanne are perceived as the cornerstone of this new progression. This relates, first of all, to a spatial conception of the canvas as a composed entity, subjected to a certain constructive system. Georges Braque, with whom Picasso became friends in the autumn of 1908 and together with whom he led Cubism during the six years of its apogee, was amazed by the similarity of Picasso''s pictorial experiments to his own. He explained that: "Cubism''s main direction was the materialisation of space." After his Cubist period, in the 1920s, Picasso returned to a more figurative style and got closer to the surrealist movement. He represented distorted and monstrous bodies but in a very personal style. After the bombing of Guernica during 1937, Picasso made one of his most famous works which starkly symbolises the horrors of that war and, indeed, all wars. In the 1960s, his art changed again and Picasso began looking at the art of great masters and based his paintings on ones by Velázquez, Poussin, Goya, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix. Picasso''s final works were a mixture of style, becoming more colourful, expressive and optimistic. Picasso died in 1973, in his villa in Mougins. The Russian Symbolist Georgy Chulkov wrote: "Picasso''s death is tragic. Yet how blind and naïve are those who believe in imitating Picasso and learning from him. Learning what? For these forms have no corresponding emotions outside of Hell. But to be in Hell means to anticipate death. The Cubists are hardly privy to such unlimited knowledge".
Paul Klee by
A broad selection of representative color reproductions presented with individual analysis and supplemented with a brief biography.
Paul Klee by
An emblematic figure of the early 20th century, Paul Klee participated in the expansive Avant-Garde movements in Germany and Switzerland. From the vibrant Blaue Reiter movement to Surrealism at the end of the 1930s and throughout his teaching years at the Bauhaus, he attempted to capture the organic and harmonic nature of painting by alluding to other artistic mediums such as poetry, literature, and, above all, music. While he collaborated with artists like August Macke and Alexej von Jawlensky, his most famous partnership was with the abstract expressionist, Wassily Kandinsky.
Paul Klee by
Paul Klee's philosophy of art is perhaps best summed up by his own statement: "A drawing is simply a line going for a walk." As one of the great avant garde artists of the 20th century, Swiss-born Klee was swept along with the changing moods and philosophies of the time. Klee did not readily fit into a particular artistic category. He used many styles and techniques, always exploring the different variations that each media opened up to him. An important element in Klee's work is his use of symbols and words to convey thoughts and philosophies directly on the canvas. To provide the greatest degree of diversification in his creations, Klee habitually used a variety of surfaces on which to paint, not just conventional canvas but also linen and even fine gauze, and sometimes coarse burlap, board, or glass--any textured surface on which color could be applied. Klee's interest, understanding, and analysis of color theory and tone--which he explained in several influential books--arguably left a greater legacy than his artworks.
The Photomontages of Hannah Hoch by 
Picasso by
Written in a straightforward style, Ferrier dissects Picasso's art & demonstrates how, beginning with Les Demoiselles d'Avign in 1907 & exploring all subsequent periods, Picasso's genius can be explained by his consistent questioning of what is visible.
Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906 by
This text is the catalogue for the spring 1997 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the summer 1997 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The exhibitions focus on Picasso's early work: the Bleu period; the Rose period; and the 1906 work devoted to the female nude.
Picasso and Portraiture: Representation and Transformation by
The first 100 years of modern art witnessed the popularization of photography and an increasing emphasis on abstraction in painting, which threatened the survival of portraiture as a genre. It continued to flourish, however, because modern painters--Picasso foremost among them--sought and found new ways to portray the human face. The hundreds of works reproduced here illustrate the multiple solutions Picasso invented to solve the problem of the modernist portrait. Illustrations, 230 in color.
Picasso and the Chess Player: Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and the Battle for the Soul of Modern Art by
In the fateful year of 1913, events in New York and Paris launched a great public rivalry between the two most consequential artists of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. The New York Armory Show art exhibition unveiled Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, a "sensation of sensations" that prompted Americans to declare Duchamp the leader of cubism, the voice of modern art. In Paris, however, the cubist revolution was reaching its peak around Picasso. In retrospect, these events form a crossroads in art history, a moment when two young bohemians adopted entirely opposite views of the artist, giving birth to the two opposing agendas that would shape all of modern art. Today, the museum-going public views Pablo Picasso as the greatest figure in modern art. Over his long lifetime, Picasso pioneered several new styles as the last great painter in the Western tradition. In the rarefied world of artists, critics, and collectors, however, the most influential artist of the last century was not Picasso, but Marcel Duchamp: chess player, prankster, and a forefather of idea-driven dada, surrealism, and pop art. Picasso and the Chess Player is the story of how Picasso and Duchamp came to define the epochal debate between modern and conceptual art--a drama that features a who's who of twentieth-century art and culture, including Henri Matisse, Gertrude Stein, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, and Andy Warhol. In telling the story, Larry Witham weaves two great art biographies into one tumultuous century.
Piet Mondrian by
Piet Mondrian pioneered the de Stijl movement--Dutch for "The Style"--that emerged in the early 20th century and which served as an important transition from a focus on Symbolism and Realism to a new and growing focus on abstraction. The evolution of Mondrian's initial, traditional style, akin to that of The Hague School, through to his much later works in primary colors and geometric forms, which he called Neo-plasticism, is marked by rather sharp deviations in stylistic form and experimentation along the way, including Cubism and Fauvism. Much of Mondrian's work was greatly influenced by Theosophy, a movement considered to be the genesis of "New Age" beliefs, begun by the Russian occultist Helena Blavatsky in 1875. The goal of her followers was to find inner enlightenment. As Mondrian sought personal inner beauty and the reason for his existence, he sought the same in his art, reducing and simplying the subjects of his paintings to the true essence of what he perceived as their inner beauty and raison d'etre. In the company of artists such as Picasso and Dalí, Mondrian's body of work is without question one of the most evolutionary in style and imaginative in content, ranging from excellently executed realistic depictions to the most abstract interpretations of their subjects.
Piet Mondrian by
Pioneer and leader of the abstract art movement, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was known for his straight lines and pure colours. Fascinated by the mathematical laws of the universe, this Dutch artist nourished his work with his scientific discoveries and created a new abstract language alongside his allies Wassily Kandinsky and Fernand Léger. As his investigations advanced, his works purified and intensified to the rhythm of the travels and encounters that he enjoyed. Recognised during his lifetime as the founder of an avant-garde movement, he propagated his knowledge and his artistic vision to illustrious architects and stylists and still today remains a cherished source of inspiration.
Piet Mondrian, 1872-1944 by
Commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death, this is an extensive study of the work of the Dutch artist, Piet Mondrian, which has greatly influenced 20th-century design, architecture and art. The essays in the book cover Mondrian's entire career and also include information about his life.
Prehistoric Future by
One of the most admired artists of the twentieth century, Max Ernst was a proponent of Dada and founder of surrealism, known for his strange, evocative paintings and drawings. In "Prehistoric Future," Ralph Ubl approaches Ernst like no one else has, using theories of the unconsciousOCosurrealist automatism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the concept of history as traumaOCoto examine how ErnstOCOs construction of collage departs from other modern artists.aUbl shows that while Picasso, Braque, and Man Ray used scissors and glue to create collages, Ernst employed techniques he himself had forgedOCorubbing and scraping to bring images forth onto a sheet of paper or canvas to simulate how a screen image or memory comes into the mindOCOs view. In addition, Ernst scoured the past for obsolete scientific illustrations and odd advertisements to illustrate the rapidity with which time passes and to simulate the apprehension generated when rapid flows of knowledge turn living culture into artifact. Ultimately, Ubl reveals, Ernst was interested in the construction and phenomenology of both collective and individual modern history and memory. Shedding new light on ErnstOCOs working methods and the reasons that his pieces continue to imprint themselves in viewersOCO memories, "Prehistoric Future" is an innovative work of critical writing on a key figure of surrealism."
The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp: Desire, Liberation, and the Self in Modern Culture by
Marcel Duchamp is a founding figure of twentieth-century art and culture, the common source to which many contemporary movements trace their roots. His career has often been celebrated for its contradictions and discontinuities, its disparate parts unified only by their assault on the traditions of art. Jerrold Seigel offers a wholly different view, revealing a web of interrelated themes that unify Duchamp's work and tie it to his life. At the book's center is a reinterpretation of the famous "readymades," of which the urinal "Fountain" and the defaced Mona Lisa were the most shocking. By recovering their history, Seigel shows that their playful and rebellious surface veiled the meanings that linked them to Duchamp's pictures (especially the famous "Large Glass," here illuminated by a comprehensive new reading) and to his experiments with language. The result gives the artist's career the unity of a colorful and intricate puzzle. Behind that puzzle were the great modernist themes of isolation, perpetuated desire, and the imagined dissolution of the self. These themes entered Duchamp's mind both from his social and cultural environment and from the shaping experience of his family; around them were woven the patterns of working and loving that Seigel uncovers in his life. Duchamp emerges not just as a coherent, understandable personality, but as an exemplary one, his very eccentricities reflecting essential dimensions of modern experience. A mythic presence in modern culture, a hero whose story we tell for the sake of its valuable lessons, Duchamp opened the floodgates to a sea of questions about the nature and meaning of art. Seigel demands that we think again about these questions, and about the answers that Duchamp's heirs and followers have tried to give to them.
Rietveld Schroder House by
Schroder House, built in 1924 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, is the first and perhaps the most famous structure designed by revered de Stijl architect Gerrit Rietveld. A pilgrimage site for architects and historians, this small townhouse is considered the first truly modern residence. Its revolutionary open-plan layout provided an alternative to confining small rooms, its strip windows broke down the barrier between inside and outside, and its primary color scheme and shifting wall planes were symbols of its rupture with tradition. This title on the building's history presents a wealth of new information, including new photographs showing details uncovered in the recent restoration, archival images from when the house was built, and floor plans of each level of the house. It also contains material from the extensive archive amassed by the client, as well as information provided by Bertus Mulder, Rietveld's assistant at the time the house was built.
The Rise of Surrealism: Cubism, Dada, and the Pursuit of the Marvelous by 
Rive Gauche: Paris as a Site of Avant-garde Art and Cultural Exchange in the 1920s. by
From the late 19th century onwards Paris had been a congenial locus for bohemian life. By 1920 Montparnasse had superseded Montmartre as the intellectual and artistic heart of the city, inaugurating a decade of unequalled creative achievement and innovative self-performance. These were the years of the 'Roaring Twenties' or années folles. "Paris" - as Gertrude Stein famously remarked - "was where the twentieth century was". The Rive Gauche offered a carnivalesque atmosphere of liberality, where the manifold experiments of the avant-garde could breathe freely. This volume attempts to do justice to the polyphony of voices and points up the synergies that existed between the creative activities of writers, painters, publishers, photographers and film-makers. The contributors adopt interdisciplinary approaches, casting new light on the rich and diverse artistic world of Paris in the twenties as presented in lesser known works by French artists, English and American expatriates, but also Belgian, Dutch, German, Polish or South American avant-gardists. The collection thus gives the reader a fascinating insight into artistic productions which have hitherto received comparatively little critical attention.
Russian Constructivism by
One of the most exciting movements in 20th century art, Russian constructivism radically reassessed the role of the artist and his work. Here, Lodder provides a detailed account of this complex movement and the reverberations it had on Western culture.
Salvador Dalí by
Painter, designer, creator of bizarre objects, author and film maker, Dalí became the most famous of the Surrealists. Buñuel, Lorca, Picasso and Breton all had a great influence on his career. Dalí's film, An Andalusian Dog, produced with Buñuel, marked his official entry into the tightly-knit group of Parisian Surrealists, where he met Gala, the woman who became his lifelong companion and his source of inspiration. But his relationship soon deteriorated until his final rift with André Breton in 1939. Nevertheless Dalí's art remained surrealist in its philosophy and expression and a prime example of his freshness, humour and exploration of the subconscious mind. Throughout his life, Dalí was a genius at self-promotion, creating and maintaining his reputation as a mythical figure.
Salvador Dalí by
"Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure--that of being Salvador Dalí." He was a force unto himself, an icon of outrageousness, artistic brilliance, eccentricity, and unmistakable style. Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domènech, Marquis of Pubol, was one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century, and in this concise narrative acclaimed art historian Mary Ann Caws provides a sharply written survey of his life and work. Salvador Dalí examines every twist and turn in Dalí's long and multifaceted career and the pivotal artistic movements at whose center he stood. From his early life in the Catalan region and his expulsions from the School of Fine Arts in Madrid and other schools to the surrealist movement and his work with Buñuel on the films Un chein andalou and L'ge d'or, Caws charts Dalí's influences and creative process. Dalí's turbulent personal life brought him in contact with a rich assortment of intellectual figures, and Caws considers his relationships with his family; his lovers, including the married Elena Diakonova; and with friends such as poet Federico Garcia Lorca. His writings, drawings, photography, and painted works offer up new clues about the artist under Caws's incisive eye, as she analyzes his lesser-known writings and creative works, as well as his Surrealist paintings and "hand-painted dream photographs" such as The Persistence of Memory. A masterfully written biographical study, Salvador Dalí paints an arresting portrait of one of the most elusive artists of our time.
Salvador Dalí by
Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) is best known for his unique and striking style with an extraordinary repertoire reaching out across film, painting, photography, and sculpture. Whilst his name may be most commonly associated with Surrealism, Dalí consummately displayed mastery over such broad genres as classical, modernist, and Cubist styles. A crucial figure in art history, Dalí has inspired countless literary works and this edifying Best Of volume gives readers a fascinating insight into the life and career highlights of one of art's most controversial and exciting pioneers.
Surrealism by
The Dada movement and then the Surrealists appeared in the First World War aftermath with a bang: revolution of thought, creativity, and the wish to break away from the past and all that was left in ruins. This refusal to integrate into the Bourgeois society lead Georg Grosz to remark of Dada, "it's the end of-isms." Breton asserted that Dada does not produce perspective, "a machine which functions full steam, but where it remains to be seen how it can feed itself." Surrealism emerged amidst such feeling. These artists often changed from one movement to another. They were united by their superior intellectualism and the common goal to break from the norm. Describing Dada with its dynamic free-thinkers, and the Surrealists with their aversive resistance to the system, the author brings a new approach which strives to be relative and truthful. Provocation and cultural revolution: Dada and the Surrealists, aren't they above all just a direct product of creative individualism in this unsettled period?
Surrealism: Genesis of a Revolution by
Surrealists appeared in the aftermath of World War I with a bang: revolution of thought, creativity, and the wish to break away from the past and all that was left in ruins.This refusal to integrate into the bourgeois society was also a leitmotiv of Dada artists, and André Breton asserted that Dada does not produce perspective. Surrealism emerged amidst such feeling. Surrealists and Dada artists often changed from one movement to another.They were united by their superior intellectualism and the common goal to break free from the norm. Describing the Surrealists with their aversive resistance to the system, the author brings a new approach which strives to be relative and truthful. Provocation and cultural revolution: aren't Surrealists after all just a direct product of creative individualism in this unsettled period?
Surrealism and Architecture by
This is a historically informed examination of architecture's perceived absence in surrealist thought, surrealist tendencies in the theories and projects of modern architecture, and the place of surrealist thought in contemporary design. This book represents current insights into surrealism in the thought and practice of modern architecture. In these essays, the role of the subconscious, the techniques of defamiliarization, aesthetic and social forces affecting the objects, interiors, cities and landscapes of the twentieth century are revealed. The book contains a diversity of voices from across modern art and architecture to bring into focus what is often overlooked in the histories of the modernist avant-garde. This collection examines the practices of writers, artists, architects, and urbanists with emphasis on a critique of the everyday world-view, offering alternative models of subjectivity, artistic effect, and the production of meanings in the built world.
Surrealism and Women by
These sixteen illustrated essays present an important revision of surrealism by focusing on the works of women surrealists and their strategies to assert positions as creative subjects within a movement that regarded woman primarily as an object of masculine desire or fear.While the male surrealists attacked aspects of the bourgeois order, they reinforced the traditional patriarchal image of woman. Their emphasis on dreams, automatic writing, and the unconscious reveal some of the least inhibited masculine fantasies. The first resistance to the male surrealists' projection of the female figure arose in the writings and paintings of marginalized woman artists and writers associated with Surrealism. The essays in this collection explore the complexity of these women's works, which simultaneously employ and subvert the dominant discourse of male surrealists. Essays What Do Little Girls Dream Of: The Insurgent Writing of Gisï½le Prassinos - Finding What You Are Not Looking For - From Dï½jeuner en fourrure to Caroline: Meret Oppenheim's Chronicle of Surrealism - Speaking with Forked Tongues: "Male" Discourse in "Female" Surrealism? - Androgyny: Interview with Meret Oppenheim - The Body Subversive: Corporeal Imagery in Carrington, Prassinos, and Mansour - Identity Crises: Joyce Mansour's Narratives - Joyce Mansour and Egyptian Mythology - In the Interim: The Constructivist Surrealism of Kay Sage - The Flight from Passion in Leonora Carrington's Literary Work - Beauty and/Is the Beast: Animal Symbology in the Work of Leonora Carrington, Remedio Varo, and Leonor Fini - Valentine, Andrï½, Paul et les autres, or the Surrealization of Valentine Hugo - Refashioning the World to the Image of Female Desire: The Collages of Aube Ellï½ouï½t - Eileen Agar - Statement by Dorothea Tanning
Surrealist Painters and Poets: An Anthology by 
Surreal Lives: The Surrealists, 1917-1945 by
In the years following World War I, a small group of writers, painters, and filmmakers called the Surrealists set out to change the way we perceive the world. In Surreal Lives, Ruth Brandon follows the lives and interactions of such firecracker minds as the movement's didactic "Pope," Andre Breton, and the ambitious and manic Salvador Dali, as well as Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, Max Ernst, and filmmaker Luis Bunuel. It charts their shifting allegiances, and their ties to muses and patrons like Gala Dali and Peggy Guggenheim. Ruth Brandon spins the many stories of Surrealism with wit, energy, and insight, bringing sharp analysis to an eccentric cast of characters whose struggles and achievements came to mirror and define the way the world changed between the wars. "Fascinating, impassioned... admirable [for] the masterly storytelling, the richness of anecdotal incident, the keen reporting of intellectual enthusiasms and artistic collaborations, and thepanorama of a spectacular cultural galaxy." -- The New York Times Book Review; "Superbly entertaining... A cousin to Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return." -- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World; "A lively and absorbing complement to [the Surrealists'] work." -- The New Yorker
Theorising the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism and the Problem of Postmodernity by
In Theorizing the Avant-Garde Richard Murphy mobilizes theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde and assesses its importance for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulations of the avant-garde and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin. Combining close textual readings of a wide range of films as well as works of literature, this interdisciplinary project will appeal to all those interested in twentieth-century modernist movements and postmodernity.
Twilight Visions by
Through an examination of surrealist photographs, objects, exhibitions, activities, and writings, the essays in Twilight Visions, the beautifully illustrated companion volume to the exhibition of the same name, portray the French capital as a city in the process of metamorphosis-in a kind of twilight state. The Bureau of Surrealist Research, the major Surrealist exhibitions, and the photographs of Paris by Brassai, Andre Kertesz, Ilse Bing, Germaine Krull, and Man Ray, among others, all reflect the tumultuous social and cultural transformations occurring in Paris in the 1920s and 30s. Juxtaposing the strange with the familiar, they seek to break down repressive hierarchies. At the same time, they represent a desire to change the world through experimental activities. Introduced by Therese Lichtenstein, with essays by Therese Lichtenstein, Julia Kelly, Colin Jones, and Whitney Chadwick, this absorbing volume considers the social, aesthetic, and political stances of the Surrealists as they probed hidden aspects of the commonplace and blurred the boundaries between dreams and reality, subjectivity and objectivity. Copub: Frist Center for the Visual Arts
Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit by
Perhaps no twentieth-century artist utilized puns and linguistic ambiguity with greater effect--and greater controversy--than Marcel Duchamp. Through a careful "unpacking" of his major works, Dalia Judovitz finds that Duchamp may well have the last laugh. She examines how he interpreted notions of mechanical reproduction in order to redefine the meaning and value of the art object, the artist, and artistic production. Judovitz begins with Duchamp's supposed abandonment of painting and his subsequent return to material that mimics art without being readily classifiable as such. Her book questions his paradoxical renunciation of pictorial and artistic conventions while continuing to evoke and speculatively draw upon them. She offers insightful analyses of his major works including The Large Glass, Fountain and Given 1) the waterfall, 2) the illuminating gas. Duchamp, a poser and solver of problems, occupied himself with issues of genre, gender, and representation. His puns, double entendres, and word games become poetic machines, all part of his intellectual quest for the very limits of nature, culture, and perception. Judovitz demonstrates how Duchamp's redefinition of artistic modes of production through reproduction opens up modernism to more speculative explorations, while clearing the ground for the aesthetic of appropriation central to postmodernism.
Walter Gropius by
Presents a biographical and critical study of German architect, teacher, and industrial designer Walter Gropius, founder and leader of the Bauhaus school, sharing details of his personal and professional life.
Walter Gropius, 1883-1969: The Promoter of a New Form by
Born and educated in Germany, Walter Gropius (1883-1969) belongs to the select group of architects that massively influenced the international development of modern architecture. As the founding director of the Bauhaus, Gropius made inestimable contributions to his field, to the point that knowing his work is crucial to understanding Modernism. His early buildings, such Fagus Boot-Last Factory and the Bauhaus Building in Dessau, with their use of glass and industrial features, are still indispensable points of reference. After his emigration to the United States, he influenced the education of architects there and became, along with Mies van der Rohe, a leading proponent of the International Style.
Wassily Kandinsky by
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter credited as being among the first to truly venture into abstract art. He persisted in expressing his internal world of abstraction despite negative criticism from his peers. He veered away from painting that could be viewed as representational in order to express his emotions, leading to his unique use of colour and form. Although his works received heavy censure at the time, in later years they would become greatly influential.
Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Munter: Letters and Reminiscences, 1902-1914 by
About the Authors: Paul R. Abramson is one of the world's most eminent scientists in the field of human sexuality. He is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a former editor of the Journal of Sex Research. He has been a technical advisor to the World Health Organization's GlobalProgram on AIDS and is the author of six books, including Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture and Sarah: A Sexual Biography. Steven D. Pinkerton recently received a doctorate in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Pinkerton has written extensively in the areas of human sexualityand AIDS prevention and is presently pursuing a broad research agenda in psychology and the behavioral sciences as a post-doctoral fellow at UCLA.
What Is Surrealism? by
Writings of the best-known leader of the Surrealist movement. Includes a facsimile reproduction of the 1942 Surrealist Album by Andre Breton.
World of Art Series Bauhaus by
The way our environment looks, the appearance of everything from housing developments to newspapers, is partly the result of a school of art and design founded in Germany in 1919 and closed down by the Nazis in 1933. This was the Bauhaus, which has left an indelible mark on art education throughout the world. Setting everything firmly against a backdrop of the times, Frank Whitford traces the cultural ideas behind its conception and thoroughly describes its teaching methods. He examines the activities of the teachers--artists as eminent as Klee and Kandinsky--and the daily lives of the students. Everything is described with the aid, wherever possible, of the words of those who were there at the time. 154 illus., 16 in color.
