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.

Concerned with the idea that Wyndham Lewis was a mass of unbound impulses released from the rationalizing censorship of a respectable consciousness, this text argues for a more nuanced and historically aware view of Lewis and his work. The eight contributors consider Lewis's career from its inception to his final novels within a major focus on World War I and the inter-war period. Their essays examine Lewis's art, his post-war politics and aesthetics, the new turn his painting and thought took in the 1930s, and the connections between modernism, war and aggression. Overall, the collection offers a reassessment of the conventional view of Lewis as the uncontrolled aggressor of British modernism.

C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946) is regarded as one of the finest British printmakers of the first half of the twentieth century - admired by contemporaries and modern-day viewers in equal measure. Yet despite this assured reputation, nothing substantial has been published on his remarkable printmaking career until now. Nevinson began creating prints in 1916, only stopping, due to ill health, in 1932. During this period he produced 148 prints, all of which reflecting his distinct vision and outstanding skills as a printmaker. Providing historical and social insights, his body of work is impressive in its range - images depicting the horrors of the First World War sit alongside contrasting cityscapes which present Nevinson's singular interpretation of Paris, New York and London. Drawing on original archival research and including a catalogue raisonne of Nevinson's prints, this unrivalled resource stands as a landmark publication in the literature available on this outstanding British modernist. It is an essential reference volume for all those who collect, sell or study Nevinson's prints and also provides much needed context for those with a general interest in the artist and the period in which he worked.

This volume is the first publication to examine in detail the phenomenon of collective art practice in the continental Western Europe of the late 1950s and of the 1960s. The book elaborates a comparative perspective, engaging with a cultural history of art deeply concerned with political ideas and geopolitical conflicts. Groups of artists and activists including Equipo 57, Equipo Cronica, Equipo Realidad, N, GRAV, Spur, Geflecht and Kommune I, have often been neglected in the English-speaking world. This happened partly because they were active in allegedly minor art centres such as Valencia, Padua, Cordoba, West-Berlin and Munich. However, their works, debates and intellectual networks cast new light on both the art produced during the Cold War and the heightened interest in participatory and collaborative art practices that has characterised the art world of the 2000s and 2010s. Individuals against Individualism tells the stories of these artists and activists, and focuses on their attempts to depict and embody forms of egalitarianism opposing the Eastern bloc authoritarianism as much as the Free world's ethos. By setting their political use of collective authorship, resistance to institutional co-optation and attack on the 'ideology of freedom, against the backdrop of the Cold War, the book largely speaks to the present.

With meticulous theories and many thousands of paintings, drawings, and watercolors, Paul Klee (1879-1940) is considered one of the most cerebral and prolific leaders of 20th-century European art. Though typically small in scale, his works are remarkable for their sophisticated thought and meticulous nuances of line, color, and tonality. Klee's stylistic formation was shaped by early affiliation with the German expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter and, in particular, by a 1914 trip to Tunisia which transformed his use of color. After the war, he taught at the esteemed Bauhaus school, where his lectures, like his emerging practice, emphasized the symbolic potential of shade, line, and geometry. Klee was also inspired by Cubism, poetry, music, literature, language, and the simplistic power of children's art. Famed for his simple stick figures, he often combined the appearance of untutored naivete with rigorous composition and intellectual significance. This book provides a selection of key Klee works to introduce his style and influence. From sun-drenched landscapes to enigmatic wordplay, discover a world at once simplistic, symbolic, and dazzlingly colorful. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. 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

A penetrating inquiry into the motives, moral dilemmas, and compromises of Walter Gropius, Emil Nolde, and other celebrated artists who chose to remain in Nazi Germany "What are we to make of those cultural figures, many with significant international reputations, who tried to find accommodation with the Nazi regime?" Jonathan Petropoulos asks in this exploration of some of the most acute moral questions of the Third Reich. In his nuanced analysis of prominent German artists, architects, composers, film directors, painters, and writers who rejected exile, choosing instead to stay during Germany's darkest period, Petropoulos shows how individuals variously dealt with the regime's public opposition to modern art. His findings explode the myth that all modern artists were anti-Nazi and all Nazis anti-modernist. Artists Under Hitler closely examines cases of artists who failed in their attempts to find accommodation with the Nazi regime (Walter Gropius, Paul Hindemith, Gottfried Benn, Ernst Barlach, Emil Nolde) as well as others whose desire for official acceptance was realized (Richard Strauss, Gustaf Grundgens, Leni Riefenstahl, Arno Breker, Albert Speer). Collectively these ten figures illuminate the complex cultural history of Nazi Germany, while individually they provide haunting portraits of people facing excruciating choices and grave moral questions.

Edward Burra (1905-76) was an English painter who is best known for his paintings of the seedy underworld of urban life. Yet, as this fascinating new monograph on his work reveals, his interests were much broader, incorporating landscape and still-life paintings, stage designs, book illustration and watercolours. Somewhat neglected by histories of modern art because his singular vision was often at odd with the mainstream art world, his work is now due for a re-appraisal. This important book represents the first full-scale monograph on Edward Burra and reproduces 100 key paintings alongside drawings and a range of fascinating contextual material. It positions Burra as a major figure in the history of 20th-century art, placing his work alongside that of the German Expressionists and other important contemporaries and influences. Long awaited, this book will be widely welcomed by all those with an interest in the art of this fascinating maverick and documenter of modern life.

One of the most important and underappreciated visual artists of the twentieth century, Romare Bearden started as a cartoonist during his college years and emerged as a painter during the 1930s, at the tail end of the Harlem Renaissance and in time to be part of a significant community of black artists supported by the WPA. Though light-skinned and able to "pass, " Bearden embraced his African heritage, choosing to paint social realist canvases of African-American life. After World War II, he became one of a handful of black artists to exhibit in a private gallery-the commercial outlet that would form the core of the American art world's post-war marketplace. Rejecting Abstract Expressionism, he lived briefly in Paris. After he suffered a nervous breakdown, Bearden returned to New York, turning to painting just as the civil rights movement was gaining ground with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education and the Montgomery bus boycott. By the time of the March on Washington in 1963, Bearden had begun to experiment with collage-or Projection, as he called it-the medium for which he would ultimately become famous. In An American Odyssey, Mary Schmidt Campbell offers readers an enlightening analysis of Bearden's influences and the thematic focus of his mature work. Bearden's work provides an exquisite portrait of memory and the African American past; according to Campbell, it also offers a record of the narrative impact of visual imagery in the twentieth century, revealing how the emerging popularity of photography, film and television depicted African Americans during their struggle to be recognized as full citizens of the United States.

This title takes an illuminating look at the unique work and artistic vision of Gerhard Richter. Born in Dresden in 1932, Gerhard Richter was first educated under the prevailing doctrine of Socialist Realism, but retrained after emigrating to West Germany, thus uniquely embodying the division of Germany during the Cold War. This volume brings together new studies of his early career by an international group of scholars. The authors approach the context from a variety of angles including the social and political histories of a divided Germany, the conflicted development of Soviet Socialist Realism in East Germany, a Cold War visuality integrating pre- and post- resettlement works, the archival dimension of the artist's output in relation to "Richter's Atlas", and the artist's involvement in the representation of his work in archives, exhibitions, and catalogues.

One of the most innovative artists and thinkers of the first half of the 20th century, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) emigrated to Britain after the forced closure of the Bauhaus, following his colleague Walter Gropius. This book examines the two years he spent in Britain in the mid-1930s before moving on to the United States - two intense years filled with commissions, collaborations, opportunities, disappointments, artistic exchanges and friendship. Moholy-Nagy was especially known in the UK as a photographer, his photos having previously been published in the Architectural Review. Although brief, Moholy-Nagy's English period represented the peak of his photographic activity. In Britain, he also worked as a graphic designer on books, advertisements and on London Transport posters. He worked as an art advisor for Simpsons' menswear store and designed publicity for the Isokon Furniture Company. He made a couple of documentary films - Lobsters and New Architecture at London Zoo and worked as a designer on Things to Come for Alexander Korda. As well as the films and photographic essays for the AR, he was introduced by John Betjeman to publisher John Miles, who commissioned him to illustrate three books: The Street Markets of London, Eton Portrait and An Oxford University Chest. He also worked with Gropius and Maxwell Fry on various exhibition designs, gave lectures and wrote articles throughout his stay, and The London Gallery held an exhibition of his work in January 1937. This highly visual book weaves together rarely seen images, documents and narrative to create a fascinating picture of the man and the artist during this critical and highly productive phase of his life.

Baroque between the Wars is a fascinating account of the arts in the twenties and thirties. We often think of this time as being dominated by modernism, yet the period saw a dialogue between modern baroque - eclectic, playful, camp, open to influence from popular culture but connected with the past, and unafraid of the grotesque or surreal - and modernism, which was theory-driven, didactic, exclusive, and essentially neo-classical. Jane Stevenson argues that both baroque and classical forms were equally valid responses to the challenge of modernity. Setting painting and literature in the context of 'minor arts' such as interior design, photography, fashion, ballet, and flower arranging, and by highlighting the social context and sexual politics of creative production, Stevenson offers a new and exciting interpretation of one of the most renowned artistic movements of the 20th century. Accessibly written and generously illustrated, the volume focuses on artists, artefacts, clients, places, and publicists to demonstrate how baroque offered a whole new way of being modern. The modern baroque was an active subversion of the tenets of modernism, practised by the people that modernism habitually excluded. Stevenson brings those excluded groups into the centrefold of the modern baroque movement in a rich history of the alternative style which has influenced much of the art, architecture, performance and literature of today.

When the State Bauhaus opened in Weimar in 1918, the Swiss artist and art theorist Johannes Itten (1888 - 1967) was one of the first teachers to be appointed by Walter Gropius. With his preliminary course, Itten had a considerable effect on the creative training in the Bauhaus; to this day his insights into the theory of colours set standards in art education and in the field of design. Enquiring mind and lecturer, painter and art teacher - Johannes Itten was a very thoughtful artist personality which was reflected in numerous theoretical texts and artworks covering a wide range of styles. Constantly in dialogue with students and colleagues as well as in a study of other cultures and artistic ideas, Itten created works in which he examined colours, their aura, contrasts and forms. Inspired by Adolf Hoelzel, his teacher at the Stuttgart Academy, Itten developed, amongst other things, the famous doctrine of colour types whose significance extends far beyond the realms of art into everyday culture. The acknowledged Itten expert Christoph Wagner introduces the artist with his complex and symbolic work and traces an arc from the revolutionary Bauhaus teacher and founder of various art schools to the art theorist of the theory of colours.

The first decades of the twentieth century were pivotal for the historical and formal relationships between early cinema and Cubism, mechanomorphism, abstraction, and Dada. To examine these relationships, Jennifer Wild's interdisciplinary study grapples with the cinema's expanded identity as a modernist form defined by the concept of horizontality. Found in early methods of projection, film exhibition, and in the film industry's penetration into cultural life by way of film stardom, advertising, and distribution, cinematic horizontality provides a new axis of inquiry for studying early twentieth-century modernism. Shifting attention from the film to the horizon of possibility around, behind, and beyond the screen, Wild shows how canonical works of modern art may be understood as responding to the changing characteristics of daily life after the cinema. Drawing from a vast popular cultural, cinematic, and art-historical archive, Wild challenges how we have told the story of modern artists' earliest encounter with cinema and urges us to reconsider how early projection, film stardom, and film distribution transformed their understanding of modern life, representation, and the act of beholding. By highlighting the cultural, ideological, and artistic forms of interpellation and resistance that shape the phenomenology of a wartime era, The Parisian Avant-Garde in the Age of Cinema, 1900 1923 provides an interdisciplinary history of radical form. This book also offers a new historiography that redefines how we understand early cinema and avant-garde art before artists turned to making films themselves.

Flags and Faces, based on David Lubin's 2008 Franklin D. Murphy Lectures at the University of Kansas, shows how American artists, photographers, and graphic designers helped shape public perceptions about World War I. In the book's first section, Art for War's Sake," Lubin considers how flag-based patriotic imagery prompted Americans to intervene in Europe in 1917. Trading on current anxieties about class, gender, and nationhood, American visual culture made war with Germany seem inevitable. The second section, Fixing Faces," contemplates the corrosive effects of the war on soldiers who literally lost their faces on the battlefield, and on their families back home. Unable to endure distasteful reminders of war's brutality, postwar Americans grew obsessed with physical beauty, as seen in the simultaneous rise of cosmetic surgery, the makeup industry, beauty pageants, and the cult of screen goddesses such as Greta Garbo, who was worshipped for the masklike perfection of her face. Engaging, provocative, and filled with arresting and at times disturbing illustrations, Flags and Faces offers striking new insights into American art and visual culture from 1915 to 1930.

Painter, draftsman and engraver, Pierre Lesieur (1922-2011) was one of the most influential French artists of the second half of the 20th century. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris - where he took lessons from Andre Lhote - and at the Academie de Montmartre, he had his first exhibition in 1952. Lesieur's paintings of the 1950s are characterised by the use of brightly coloured areas, in line with the work of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard. In the 1960s, this research bordered on abstraction, particularly in still lifes and representations of objects. From the 1970s onwards, through his paintings and drawings, Lesieur took a particular interest in interiors, as well as in portraits and female nudes. Early in his career, Pierre Lesieur was recognised as an important artist. After his first personal exhibition in 1952, his work was regularly shown at the Coard Gallery in Paris. From the 1990s, Lesieur's notoriety became international, resulting in further exhibitions in Japan and the United States. Some of his works are now housed in major museums such as the Center Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Hiroshima Museum. Text in English and French.

Poets and intellectuals brushed shoulders in bustling coffeehouses, young avant-gardists heralded a new era in social and sexual liberalism, waltzes resounded through the Ringstrasse, the Vienna Secession preached: "To every age its art - to every art its freedom;" and tremors warned of looming political disintegration when the Austrian capital passed into a new century. Across economics, science, art, and music, Vienna blossomed into a "laboratory of modernity," one which nurtured some of the greatest artistic innovators-from Egon Schiele's unflinching nude portraits to Gustav Klimt's decadent Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, from the ornamental seams and glass floors of Otto Wagner to Ditha Moser's calendars adorned in golden deities. Discover the zeitgeist, the scandals, and the extraordinary protagonists in this introduction to a transformative epoch. Across painting, sculpture, architecture, and design, we explore all the movers and shakers through insightful profiles and crisp double-page reproductions. Marking the centenary of the deaths of some of its brightest talents, this collection joins Vienna in its 2018 celebration of Modernism. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art History series features: approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a detailed, illustrated introduction a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

1918 marked the end of a golden era: it was the year that Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Koloman Moser, and Otto Wagner died. Artistic activity, however, had already freed itself of their influence. Hardly affected by the political disruptions taking plac e, artists in the countries of the former Austro - Hungarian monarchy were busily productive, driven by a desire for a new start. The period between the two World Wars is characterised in the arts by international networks that transcended political and id eological borders. A lively artistic exchange took place, stimulating constructive, expressionist, and fantastic tendencies. An increasingly important role was played by magazines that disseminated new positions. The outbreak of World War II abruptly inter rupted these cosmopolitan art networks. This publication examines the fascinating, artistically fruitful epoch between the wars.

After Many Springs is the title of a Thomas Hart Benton painting that evokes nostalgia for a fertile, creative time gone by. This bold new book--taking the name of this work by Benton--examines the intersections between Regionalist and Modernist paintings, photography, and film during the Great Depression, a period when the two approaches to art making were perhaps at their zenith. It is commonly believed that Regionalist artists Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood reacted to the economic and social devastation of their era by harking back in tranquil bucolic paintings to a departed utopia. However, this volume compares their work to that of photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn and filmmakers such as Josef von Sternberg-all of whom documented the desolation of the Depression-and finds surprising commonalities. The book also notes intriguing connections between Regionalist artists and Modernists Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston, countering prevailing assumptions that Regionalism was an anathema to these New York School painters and showing their shared fascination with the Midwest. Distributed for the Des Moines Art Center Exhibition Schedule: Des Moines Art Center (January 30 - May 17, 2009)

Frida Kahlo stepped into the limelight in 1929 when she married the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. She was 22; he was 43. Hailed as Rivera's exotic young wife who 'dabbles in art', she went on to produce brilliant paintings, but remained in her husband's shadow throughout her life. Today, almost six decades after her untimely death, Kahlo's fame rivals that of Rivera and she has gained international acclaim as a path-breaking artist and a cultural icon. Cutting through 'Fridamania', this book explores Kahlo's life, art and legacies, while also scrutinizing the myths, contradictions and ambiguities that riddle her dramatic story. Gannit Ankori examines Kahlo's early childhood, medical problems, volatile marriage, political affiliations, religious beliefs and, most important, her unparalleled and innovative art. Based on detailed analyses of the artist's paintings, diary, letters, photographs, medical records and interviews, the book also assesses Kahlo's critical impact on contemporary art and culture. Kahlo was of her time, deeply immersed in the issues that dominated the first half of the twentieth century. Yet, as this book reveals, she was also ahead of her time.Her paintings challenged social norms and broke taboos, addressing themes such as the female body, gender, cross-dressing, hybridity, identity and trauma, in ways that continue to inspire contemporary artists across the globe. Frida Kahlo is a succinct and powerful account of the life, art and legacy of this iconic artist.

The Aesthetics of Loss is a cultural history of German women's art of the First World War that locates the artists' rich visual testimony in the context of the civilian experience of war and wartime loss. Drawing on a fascinating body of visual sources produced throughout the war years, Claudia Siebrecht examines the thematic evolution of women's art from expressions of support for the war effort to more nuanced and ambivalent testimonies of loss and grief. Many of the images are stark woodcuts, linocuts, and lithographs of great iconographical power that acted as narrative tools to deal with the novel, unsettling, and often traumatic experience of war. German female artists developed a unique aesthetic response to the conflict that both expressed emotional distress and allowed them to re-imagine the place of mourning women in wartime society. Historical codes of wartime behaviour and traditional rites of public mourning led female artists to redefine cultural practices of bereavement, question existing notions of heroic death and proud bereavement through art, and to place grief at the centre of women's war experiences. As a cultural, aesthetic, and thematic point of reference, German women's art of the First World War has had a fundamental influence on the European memory and understanding of modern war.

This new title, with text by Peyton Skipwith and Brian Webb, contains more than 170 images, several not illustrated before. The book focuses on Ravilious as a designer, in particular his work as an illustrator and wood engraver, and his work in ceramics and textiles. The book builds on the success of the first and bestselling book in this series which featured the work of Ravilious and his friend Edward Bawden - Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious: Design. This book will form an excellent and affordable introduction to the work of this brilliant and popular artist.

Why was New York abstract expressionism so successful after World War II? To answer that question, Serge Guilbaut takes a controversial look at the complicated, intertwining relationship among art, politics, and ideology. He explores the changing New York and Paris art scenes of the Cold War period, the rejection by artists of political ideology, and the coopting by left-wing writers and politicians of the artistic revolt.

Rudolph Zallinger's 110-foot (33.5-meter) fresca secco painting of The Age of Reptiles is one of the largest natural history murals in the world. Completed in 1947, it is an overview of prehistoric life told through the principal features and concepts of The Age of Reptiles. The mural has defined our view of the prehistoric world, and continues to teach, inform and spark the imagination of thousands of visitors that walk through the Yale Peabody Museum's Great Hall each year, as well as to admirers around the world over through countless reproductions in publications and textbooks. This second edition of the Peabody's guide to Zallinger's masterwork is a compilation of earlier material and new information-including Vincent Scully's classic essay on the mural's place in the history of art-contributed by the staff and scientists of the Yale Peabody Museum. Filled with full color illustrations throughout, the concealed spiral paperback includes updated descriptions and identifying illustrations of the animals and plants depicted in the mural keyed to a 12 page foldout full-color poster that is bound into the book. Distributed for the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History

This publication sets the precedent for the next generation of Lawrence scholars and studies in modern and contemporary discourse. The American Struggle explores Jacob Lawrence's radical way of transforming history into art by looking at his thirty panel series of paintings, Struggle . . . from the History of the American People (1954-56). Essays by Steven Locke, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Austen Barron Bailly, and Lydia Gordon mark the historic reunion of this series-seen together in this exhibition for the first time since 1958. In entries on the panels, a multitude of voices responds to the episodes representing struggle from American history that Lawrence chose to activate in his series. The American Struggle reexamines Lawrence's lost narrative and its power for twenty-first century audiences by including contemporary art and artists. Derrick Adams, Bethany Collins, and Hank Willis Thomas invite us to reconsider history through themes of struggle in ways that resonate with Lawrence's artistic invention. Statements by these artists amplify how they and Lawrence view history not as distant period of the past but as an active imaginative space that is continuously questioned in the present tense and for future audiences.

Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction offers a fresh and revealing assessment of the artist's prolific and innovative painterly career. The comprehensive exhibition and accompanying catalogue will feature approximately seventy paintings and works on paper by Hofmann from 1930 through the end of his life in 1966, including works from public and private collections across North America and Europe. Curator Lucinda Barnes builds on new scholarship published over the past ten years and the 2014 catalogue raisonne to present Hofmann as a unique synthesis of student, artist, teacher, and mentor who transcended generations and continents. His singular artistic achievement drew on artistic influences and innovations that spanned two world wars and transatlantic avant-gardes. Over the last fifty years Hofmann has come to be understood primarily from the vantage of his late color-plane abstractions. Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction expands our understanding and reinvigorates our appreciation of Hofmann through an inclusive presentation of his artistic arc, showing the vibrant interconnectedness and continuity in his work of European and American influences from the early twentieth century through the advent of abstract expressionism. Published in association with the Berkeley Museum of Art Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Exhibition dates: Berkeley Museum of Art Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA): February 27-July 21, 2019 The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA: September 21, 2019-January 6, 2020