Deborah Ascher Barnstone: Beyond the Bauhaus: Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918-33 (2016)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1920s, architecture, art history, avant-garde, cultural history, modernism, urbanism, weimar republic, wroclaw
“Although the Breslau arts scene was one of the most vibrant in all of Weimar-era Germany, it has largely disappeared from memory. Studies of the influence of Weimar culture on modernism have focused almost exclusively on Berlin and the Dessau Bauhaus, yet the advances that occurred in Breslau affected nearly every intellectual field, forming the basis for aesthetic modernism internationally and having an enduring impact on visual art and architecture. Breslau boasted a thriving modern arts scene and one of the premier German arts academies of the day until the Nazis began their assault on so-called degenerate art. This book charts the cultural production of Breslau-based artists, architects, art collectors, urban designers, and arts educators who operated in the margins of Weimar-era cultural debates. Rather than accepting the radical position of the German avant-garde or the reactionary position of German conservatives, many Breslauers sought a middle ground.
This richly illustrated volume is the first book in English to address this history, constituting an invaluable addition to the literature on the Weimar period. Its readership includes scholars of German history, art, architecture, urban design, planning, collecting, and exhibition history; of the avant-garde, and of the development of arts academies and arts pedagogy.”
Publisher University of Michigan Press, 2016
Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany series
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0
ISBN 0472119907, 9780472119905
xi+256 pages
Patrizia C. McBride: The Chatter of the Visible: Montage and Narrative in Weimar Germany (2016)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, art history, avant-garde, constructivism, dada, film, montage, narrative, neue sachlichkeit, photography, photomontage, weimar republic
“The Chatter of the Visible examines the paradoxical narrative features of the photo montage aesthetics of artists associated with Dada, Constructivism, and the New Objectivity. While montage strategies have commonly been associated with the purposeful interruption of and challenge to narrative consistency and continuity, McBride offers an historicized reappraisal of 1920s and 1930s German photo montage work to show that its peculiar mimicry was less a rejection of narrative and more an extension or permutation of it—a means for thinking in narrative textures exceeding constraints imposed by “flat” print media (especially the novel and other literary genres).
McBride’s contribution to the conversation around Weimar-era montage is in her situation of the form of the work as a discursive practice in its own right, which affords humans a new way to negotiate temporality; as a particular mode of thinking that productively relates the particular to the universal; or as a culturally specific form of cognition.”
Publisher University of Michigan Press, 2016
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0
ISBN 9780472053032, 0472053035
x+236 pages
Asger Jorn: Pour la forme. Ébauche d’une méthodologie des arts (1957/2001) [French, English]
Filed under book | Tags: · art, avant-garde, situationists, theory
Pour la forme was one of the first projects of the newly formed Situationist International. The publication collected texts of Asger Jorn from the immediately preceding period. As Jorn explained in his introductory “Notice,” the texts collected in that book reflected the evolution of his experiments and encounters among radical avant-garde currents following the dissolution of the Cobra group (1948-1951) and leading up to the formation of the SI in 1957.
Contents:
Guy Debord: Dix années d’art expérimental: Jorn et son rôle dans l’invention théoretique, 7
Avertissement, 10-11
Image et forme, 11-24
Contre le functionalisme, 25-33
Forme et structure, 34-47
Misère et merveille, 48-56
Structure et changement, 57-70
Charme et mécanique, 71-92
Les Situationnistes et l’automation, 93-95
Mouvement et forme, 96-114
Forme et signification, 115-138
Sortie, 142-157
Four texts (plus “Notice”) from the book were translated from the French by Ken Knabb for a comprehensive English-language collection of Jorn’s writings: Fraternité Avant Tout: Asger Jorn’s Writings on Art and Architecture, 1938-1958 (010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2011, edited by Ruth Baumeister).
First published by Internationale situationniste, Paris, 1957.
This edition
Preface by Guy Debord
Publisher Allia, Paris, 2001
ISBN 2844850723
157 pages
via x
PDF (29 MB)
4 + 1 texts in English (trans. Ken Knabb, 2011, HTML)