Download or read book Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s written by Lewis Mumford and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-02-05 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Superbly crafted little essays, Lewis Mumford's New Yorker pieces called 'The Art Galleries' well deserve this handsome republication. They offer supremely tasteful guided tours of the galleries and museums of Manhattan at the time when the canon of Western art, including modernism, was being secured, against a background of tension between abstraction and realism and between aestheticism and social commitment. The essays are a gift for our own troubled times from one of the great humane and versatile critics of the twentieth century; they offer the reassurance of urbanity, poise, and commitment to art as a primary social necessity."—Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Grey Emeritus Professor of English, Yale University

Download or read book Mumford on Modern Art in the 1930s written by Lewis Mumford and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Superbly crafted little essays, Lewis Mumford's New Yorker pieces called 'The Art Galleries' well deserve this handsome republication. They offer supremely tasteful guided tours of the galleries and museums of Manhattan at the time when the canon of Western art, including modernism, was being secured, against a background of tension between abstraction and realism and between aestheticism and social commitment. The essays are a gift for our own troubled times from one of the great humane and versatile critics of the twentieth century; they offer the reassurance of urbanity, poise, and commitment to art as a primary social necessity."—Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Grey Emeritus Professor of English, Yale University

Download or read book Acrobatic Modernism from the Avant Garde to Prehistory written by Jed Rasula and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about artistic modernism contending with the historical transfigurations of modernity. As a conscientious engagement with modernity's restructuring of the lifeworld, the modernist avant-garde raised the stakes of this engagement to programmatic explicitness. But even beyond the vanguard, the global phenomenon of jazz combined somatic assault with sensory tutelage. Jazz, like the new technologies of modernity, re-calibrated sensory ratios. The criterion of the new as self-making also extended to names: pseudonyms and heteronyms. The protocols of modernism solicited a pragmatic arousal of bodily sensation as artistic resource, validating an acrobatic sensibility ranging from slapstick and laughter to the pathos of bereavement. Expressivity trumped representation. The artwork was a diagram of perception, not a mimetic rendering. For artists, the historical pressures of altered perception provoked new models, and Ezra Pound's slogan 'Make It New' became the generic rallying cry of renovation. The paradigmatic stance of the avant-garde was established by Futurism, but the discovery of prehistoric art added another provocation to artists. Paleolithic caves validated the spirit of all-over composition, unframed and dynamic. Geometric abstraction, Constructivism and Purism, and Surrealism were all in quest of a new mythology. Making it new yielded a new pathos in the sensation of radical discrepancy between futurist striving and remotest antiquity. The Paleolithic cave and the USSR emitted comparable siren calls on behalf of the remote past and the desired future. As such, the present was suffused with the pathos of being neither, but subject to both.

Download or read book Partners in Design written by David A. Hanks and published by The Monacelli Press, LLC. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1920s and 1930s saw the birth of modernism in the United States, a new aesthetic, based on the principles of the Bauhaus in Germany: its merging of architecture with fine and applied arts; and rational, functional design devoid of ornament and without reference to historical styles. Alfred H. Barr Jr., the then 27-year-old founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, and 23-year-old Philip Johnson, director of its architecture department, were the visionary young proponents of the modern approach. Shortly after meeting at Wellesley College, where Barr taught art history, and as Johnson finished his studies in philosophy at Harvard, they set out on a path that would transform the museum world and change the course of design in America. The Museum of Modern Art opened just over a week after the stock market crash of 1929. In the depths of the Depression, using as their laboratories both MoMA and their own apartments in New York City, Barr and Johnson experimented with new ideas in museum ideology, extending the scope beyond painting and sculpture to include architecture, photography, graphic design, furniture, industrial design, and film; with exhibitions of ordinary, machine-made objects (including ball bearings and kitchenware) elevated to art by their elegant design; and with installations in dramatically lit galleries with smooth, white walls. Partners in Design, which accompanies an exhibition opening at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in April 2016, chronicles their collaboration, placing it in the larger context of the avant-garde in New York—1930s salons where they mingled with Julien Levy, the gallerist who brought Surrealism to the United States, and Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet; their work to help Bauhaus artists like Josef and Anni Albers escape Nazi Germany—and the dissemination of their ideas across the United States through MoMA’s traveling exhibition program. Plentifully illustrated with icons of modernist design, MoMA installation views, and previously unpublished images of the Barr and Johnson apartments—domestic laboratories for modernism, and in Johnson’s case, designed and furnished by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe—this fascinating study sheds new light on the introduction and success in North America of a new kind of modernism, thanks to the combined efforts of two uniquely discerning and influential individuals.

Download or read book American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture written by Alice T. Friedman and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alice Friedman argues that the aesthetics of mid-20th century modern architecture reflect an increasing fascination with 'glamour', a term used in those years to characterise objects, people, & experiences as luxurious, expressive & even magical.

Download or read book Wright on Exhibit written by Kathryn Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first history of Frank Lloyd Wright's exhibitions of his own work—a practice central to his career More than one hundred exhibitions of Frank Lloyd Wright's work were mounted between 1894 and his death in 1959. Wright organized the majority of these exhibitions himself and viewed them as crucial to his self-presentation as his extensive writings. He used them to promote his designs, appeal to new viewers, and persuade his detractors. Wright on Exhibit presents the first history of this neglected aspect of the architect’s influential career. Drawing extensively from Wright’s unpublished correspondence, Kathryn Smith challenges the preconceived notion of Wright as a self-promoter who displayed his work in search of money, clients, and fame. She shows how he was an artist-architect projecting an avant-garde program, an innovator who expanded the palette of installation design as technology evolved, and a social activist driven to revolutionize society through design. While Wright’s earliest exhibitions were largely for other architects, by the 1930s he was creating public installations intended to inspire debate and change public perceptions about architecture. The nature of his exhibitions expanded with the times beyond models, drawings, and photographs to include more immersive tools such as slides, film, and even a full-scale structure built especially for his 1953 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. Placing Wright’s exhibitions side by side with his writings, Smith shows how integral these exhibitions were to his vision and sheds light on the broader discourse concerning architecture and modernism during the first half of the twentieth century. Wright on Exhibit features color renderings, photos, and plans, as well as a checklist of exhibitions and an illustrated catalog of extant and lost models made under Wright’s supervision.

Download or read book The Art and Thought of John La Farge written by Katie Kresser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art and Thought of John La Farge: Picturing Authenticity in Gilded Age America offers an unprecedented portrait of one of the most celebrated artists of the Gilded Age and opens a window onto nineteenth-century American culture. The book reveals how the work of John La Farge contributed to a rich philosophical dialogue concerning the trustworthiness of human perception. In his struggle against a 'common truth' of iconic symbols presented by a new mass visual culture, La Farge developed a subversive approach to visual representation that focused attention not on the artwork itself, but on the complex, real encounter of artist, subject and medium from which the artwork came. Katie Kresser charts La Farge's efforts to assert his own reality - his own intrinsic uniqueness - in a postwar society that increasingly based personal identity on standardized vocational labels and economic productivity. La Farge's work is contrasted with that of Kenyon Cox, James Whistler and Henry Adams, all of whom (for La Farge) had fallen prey to the crass new visual environment - albeit in very different ways. This innovative study suggests that La Farge dealt with issues still relevant in a world characterized by ubiquitous mass media and the proliferation of 'normative' visions.

Download or read book New York 1930 written by Robert A. M. Stern and published by Rizzoli International Publications. This book was released on 1987 with total page 852 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highly esteemed by architects and New York history enthusiasts, 'New York 1930' focuses on the development of many of the landmark structures and the built environment of New York, including the parks, highways, and entertainment districts.

Download or read book Philip Johnson written by Franz Schulze and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-06-15 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this critically acclaimed biography, Franz Schulze probes the private and professional life of one of the most famous architects and architectural critics of the twentieth century. The only child of a wealthy Midwestern family, Philip Johnson was a millionaire by the time he graduated from Harvard, and in 1932 he helped stage the historic International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. A patron of the arts and a political activists who flirted with the politics of Hitler, Huey Long, and Father Coughlin, he went on to create controversial and historical structures such as the Glass House, the Roofless Church, the AT & T Building, the Crystal Cathedral, and many more. Johnson's personal charms paired with his manipulative ploys—like his "borrowing" of designs—shine through in this biography. Drawing on Johnson's correspondence, personal photographs, and speeches, and on interviews with his friends and contemporaries, Schulze fills the biography with fascinating information on the architect's family, travels, friends and lovers, and his many buildings and spaces themselves. Franz Schulze is a professor of art at Lake Forest College. He is the author of Fantastic Images: Chicago Art since 1945, One Hundred Years of Chicago Architecture, and Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography.

Download or read book The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian written by Gevork Hartoonian and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-11 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting with the question concerning the discursive formation of architectural history, the chapters compiled in this book attempt to re-read the historiography of early modern architecture from the point of view of the theoretical work produced since the post-war era. Central to the objectives of the argument are the ways in which, firstly, architectural history differs from the traditions of art history, and, secondly, that the historical narrative works its autonomy through theoretical representation, the discursive flow of which is interrupted by the historian’s urge to support arguments with references to buildings, texts, drawings, and historical events. The historians discussed in this volume are those regularly addressed by most critics revisiting modern architectural history. Individual chapters are dedicated to N. Pevsner, H. R. Hitchcock, and S. Giedion, an economy of selection that is formative for a critical understanding of the canon established by these historians. Themes such as periodization, autonomy, and time are discussed, and the coda of the final chapter expands on the scope of “critical historiography” popularised by Kenneth Frampton and Manfredo Tafuri.

Download or read book Walter Pach 1883 1958 written by Laurette E. McCarthy and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explores the career of Walter Pach (1883-1958), an influential figure in twentieth-century art and culture. As critic, agent, liaison, and lecturer, Pach helped win the acceptance of modern European, American, and Mexican art throughout the North American continent"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Sidewalk Critic written by Lewis Mumford and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) is best known for his Sky Line column in the New Yorker where he served as architecture critic for over 30 years. A man of letters and part of Manhattan's intellectual elite, Mumford wrote more than 20 books over 6 decades, bridging the seemingly disparate disciplines of architecture, technology, literary criticism, biography, sociology and philosophy.

Download or read book Modern Housing written by Catherine Bauer and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original guide on modern housing from the premier expert and activist in the public housing movement Originally published in 1934, Modern Housing is widely acknowledged as one of the most important books on housing of the twentieth century, introducing the latest developments in European modernist housing to an American audience. It is also a manifesto: America needs to draw on Europe’s example to solve its housing crisis. Only when housing is transformed into a planned, public amenity will it truly be modern. Modern Housing’s sharp message catalyzed an intense period of housing activism in the United States, resulting in the Housing Act of 1937, which Catherine Bauer coauthored. But these reforms never went far enough: so long as housing remained the subject of capitalist speculation, Bauer knew the housing problem would remain. In light of today’s affordable housing emergency, her prescriptions for how to achieve humane and dignified modern housing remain as instructive and urgent as ever.

Download or read book American Moderns on Paper written by Erin Monroe and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Moderns on Paper presents a selection of approximately 100 of the finest watercolors, pastels, and drawings by leading American modernists from the Wadsworth Atheneum's renowned collection of American art. Works by Sloan, O'Keeffe, Hopper, Marin, Dalí, and Wyeth, among many others, serve as notable examples of the various styles and subjects pursued by artists in America from 1910 to 1960. The catalogue entries are accompanied by artist biographies. Organized chronologically, and generously illustrated throughout, the catalogue is introduced by two essays exploring the historical significance of the collection and the importance to American modernists of working on paper, rather than canvas. Providing a rich history of the collection, the volume illuminates not only its historic roots, but also the concurrent national evolution of interest in watercolor and drawings. Published in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX (2/27/10-5/30/10) Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME (6/22/10-9/12/10) Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (10/2/10-1/2/11)

Download or read book From Space in Modern Art to a Spatial Art History written by Jutta Vinzent and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces artists’ theories of constructive space in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on these concepts and recent theories on space, it develops a methodology termed ‘Spatial Art History’ that conceives of artworks as physical spatio-temporal things, which produce the social, to overcome the reductive understanding of art as a mere mirror or facilitator of society.

Download or read book Art and Politics in the 1930s written by Susan Noyes Platt and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Frank Lloyd Wright Lewis Mumford written by Frank Lloyd Wright and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 2001-09 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Their 160 letters from 1926-1958 covered a wide range of topics, including Wright's position on the history of American architecture and contemporary practice, their friends and rivals, the invention and spread of the International Style, and political events in Europe and the United States.".