Christian Höller (ed.): L’Internationale: Post-War Avant-Gardes Between 1957 and 1986 (2012/2015)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, art history, avant-garde, neo-avant-garde
“L’Internationale is a trans-institutional network of five major European museums and artists’ archives (Moderna galerija Ljubljana; Július Koller Society Bratislava/Vienna, MACBA Barcelona, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, M HKA Antwerp).
Taking as its starting point these five museums and their respective collections, L’Internationale—Post-War Avant-Gardes Between 1957 and 1986 presents a wide range of case studies, historiographical and theoretical essays that reconsider a period in art history that, according to the established canon, has been almost exclusively dominated by Western Europe and North America. In questioning this canon the publication works to acknowledge the existence of and to explore a dispersed, multi-polar, and at times interconnected neo-avant-gardist field that existed (long) before it became common to think according to frameworks of globalization or trans-nationalism. In the process, this collection of compelling contributions puts many a central question on the table: To what extent has a common international language existed in art over these three decades, while at the same time local terminologies and approaches might have differed significantly? How were such dispersed forms of knowledge and experience situated in their respective social contexts? What parallels of artistic method appeared across different regions, even continents? Finally, can such local narratives be brought together in a new “rhizomatic” way, one that works to reshape our ideas of trans-localism and internationalism?”
With essays by Inke Arns, Zdenka Badovinac, Bart de Baere, Charles Esche, Daniel Grúň, Christian Höller, Bartomeu Mari, Viktor Misiano, Piotr Piotrowski, Georg Schöllhammer, Steven ten Thije, and others.
First published in print by JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2012
eBook Publisher L’Internationale Online, 2015
416 pages
Review: Natalia Smolianskaïa (Critique d’art, 2013).
Comment (0)Klaus Groh (ed.): Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa (1972) [German]
Filed under book | Tags: · 1960s, 1970s, action art, art, avant-garde, body art, conceptual art, east-central europe, eastern europe, land art
“This book by the West-German mail artist, editor and collector Klaus Groh, published in 1972, was an important contribution to familiarizing Western Europe with Eastern-European, primarily conceptual art and land art, body art, action, etc. This frequently cited publication includes works by 78 artists.” (Source)
Publisher DuMont-Schauberg, Cologne, 1972
ISBN 3770106172, 9783770106172
222 pages
via Artpool Budapest
Maud Lavin: Cut With the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch (1993)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, art history, avant-garde, collage, dada, gender, mass media, montage, photomontage, weimar republic, women
“The women of Weimar Germany had an uneasy alliance with modernity: while they experienced cultural liberation after World War I, these “New Women” still faced restrictions in their earning power, political participation, and reproductive freedom. Images of women in newspapers, films, magazines, and fine art of the 1920s reflected their ambiguous social role, for the women who were pictured working in factories, wearing androgynous fashions, or enjoying urban nightlife seemed to be at once empowered and ornamental, both consumers and products of the new culture. In this book Maud Lavin investigates the multi-layered social construction of femininity in the mass culture of Weimar Germany, focusing on the intriguing photomontages of the avant-garde artist Hannah Höch.
Höch, a member of the Berlin Dada group, was recognized as one of the most innovative practitioners of photomontage. In such works as Dada-Ernst and Cut with the Kitchen Knife, she reconstructed the wonderfully seductive mass media images of the New Woman with their appeal intact but with their contours fractured in order to expose the contradictions of the new female stereotypes. Her photomontages exhibit a disturbing tension between pleasure and anger, confidence and anxiety. In Weimar—as today—says Lavin, the representation of women in the mass media took on a political meaning when it challenged the distribution of power in society. Höch’s work provides important evidence of the necessity for women to shape the production and reception of the images that redefine their role.”
Publisher Yale University Press, 1993
ISBN 0300047665, 9780300047660
xvii+260 pages
Reviews: Johanna Drucker (Art Journal 1993), Susan Sensemann (Design Issues 1994), Greil Marcus (2014).
PDF (assembled from scans on author’s Academia.edu page, 24 MB, no OCR)
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