This new account of international modernism explores the complex motivations behind this revolutionary movement and assesses its triumphs and failures. The work of the main architects of the movement such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe is re-examined shedding new light on their roles as acknowledged masters.

Alan Colquhoun explores the evolution of the movement fron Art Nouveau in the 1890s to the megastructures of the 1960s, revealing the often contradictory demands of form, function, social engagement, modernity and tradition.

One of the most extraordinary artists associated with the Bauhaus school, Herbert Bayer united graphic design, art and architecture in an uncompromising artistic vision that came to represent the bold aesthetic approach of the movement. A teacher with the school until 1928, Bayer went on to become a highly successful graphic designer in Germany, and later one of the most prominent figures in the 20th-century art scene of the United States. This broad biographical account, which presents previously unseen archival photographs and episodes from the life of Bayer and other influential Bauhaus artists such as Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, follows Bayer through the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and finally to his exile in the United States. Specifically, Patrick Roessler reveals for the first time Bayer's unique experience of 1930s Germany, where, with his commercial and artistic life shattered by terror and censorship, he distracted himself with leading a hedonistic life. Shining a light on Bayer's time in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, and his route out of the Nazi state, Roessler provides rich new insights into how Bauhaus artists navigated a protracted period of social upheaval and dictatorship, where commercial success was fraught with a deep hostility towards the regime and the temptations of emigration. Revealing the tensions of an avant-garde artist struggling to practice during a period of repression, Herbert Bayer, Graphic Designer speaks to both the memory of those who left Nazi Germany, but also the perseverance of artists and intellectuals throughout history who have worked under authoritarian regimes. Drawing on never before interpreted documents, letters and archival material, Roessler tells Bayer's compelling story - documenting the life of a unique artist and offering a valuable contribution to research in emigre experiences.

The architect and theorist Walter Behrendt was involved with public housing and urban development as a designer and administrator for the German government after World War I. From 1925 to 1926 he edited the journal Die Form for the German Werkbund and led an articulate and well-orchestrated campaign in support of the Modern Movement. A friend and colleague of Lewis Mumford, he immigrated in 1934 to the United States where he taught courses on city planning and housing at Dartmouth College and the University of Buffalo.
This book--Behrendt's principle theoretical work in German and the precursor to Modern Building--presents a revisionist concept of style that places equal emphasis on form and function. Here, Behrendt calls for architects to return to basic geometries and to articulate explicitly the new social and economic realities. Now available in English for the first time, this incisive treatise boldly advocates international modernism to the general public.

Jeanne Mammen's watercolour images of the gender-bending 'new woman' and her candid portrayals of Berlin's thriving nightlife appeared in some of the most influential magazines of the Weimar Republic and are still considered characteristic of much of the 'glitter' of that era. This book charts how, once the Nazis came into power, Mammen instead created 'degenerate' paintings and collages, translated prohibited French literature and sculpted in clay and plaster-all while hidden away in her tiny studio apartment in the heart of Berlin's fashionable west end. What was it like as a woman artist to produce modern art in Nazi Germany? Can artworks that were never exhibited in public still make valid claims to protest? Camilla Smith examines a wide range of Mammen's dissenting artworks, ranging from those created in solitude during inner emigration to her collaboration with artist cabarets after the Second World War. Smith's engaging analysis compares Mammen's popular Weimar work to her artistic activities under the radar after 1933, in order to fundamentally rethink the moral complexities of inner emigration and its visual culture. While Mammen's artistry is considered through the lens of gender politics to reveal her complex relationship with the urbanisation of her time, this book also highlights the crucial role played by a lost generation of inner emigre women artists as agents of German modernity. The examination of Mammen's life and work demonstrates the crucial role women artists played as both markers and agents of German modernity, but the double marginalisation they have nonetheless encountered as inner emigres in recent history. It will be of interest to students of German studies, art history, literature, history, gender studies and cultural studies.

This new edited volume of critical essays examines designs for modern living in Asia between 1945 and 1990. Focusing particularly on the post-World War II and postcolonial years, this book advances multidisciplinary knowledge on approaches to and designs for modern living. Developed from extensive primary research and case studies, each essay illuminates commonalities and particularities of the trajectories of Modernism and notions of modernity, their translation and manifestation in life across Asia through design. Authors address everyday negotiations and experiences of being modern by studying exhibitions, architecture, modern interiors, printed ephemera, literary discourses, healthy living movements and transnational networks of modern designers. They examine processes of exchange between people, institutions and with governments, in and across Asia, as well as with the USA and countries in Western Europe. This book highlights the ways in which the production and discourses of modern design were underscored by economic advancement and modernization processes, and fuelled by aesthetic debates on modern design. Critically exploring design for modern living in Asia, this book offers fresh perspectives on Modernism to students and scholars.

This publication, accompanying the worldwide exhibition series, takes the quotation of the former Bauhaus student and subsequent university teacher Fritz Kuhr as a starting point for reflections on the Bauhaus; not only as a school in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, but also in order to focus on the parallel Modernist movements in non-European regions. This volume explains in hitherto unknown depth the Bauhaus and its multi-faceted forms of expression, which extended far beyond the Constructivist language of the 1920s. Case studies from Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Santiago de Chile, Moscow, the USA and elsewhere show that the Bauhaus was not an exclusive undertaking of the modern age. Avant-gardes in many regions of the world examined the Bauhaus from their own point of view and integrated it into their discourses. In this way the Bauhaus became a global motor for new developments in society, culture and politics.

A dazzling dual portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright and early twentieth-century New York, revealing the city's role in establishing the career of America's most famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) took his first major trip to New York in 1909, fleeing a failed marriage and artistic stagnation. He returned a decade later, his personal life and architectural career again in crisis. Booming 1920s New York served as a refuge, but it also challenged him and resurrected his career. The city connected Wright with important clients and commissions that would harness his creative energy and define his role in modern architecture, even as the stock market crash took its toll on his benefactors. Wright denounced New York as an "unlivable prison" even as he reveled in its culture. The city became an urban foil for Wright's work in the desert and in the "organic architecture" he promoted as an alternative to American Art Deco and the International Style. New York became a major protagonist at the end of Wright's life, as he spent his final years at the Plaza Hotel working on the Guggenheim Museum, the building that would cement his legacy. Anthony Alofsin has broken new ground by mining the recently opened Wright archives held by Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art. His foundational research provides a crucial and innovative understanding of Wright's life, his career, and the conditions that enabled his success. The result is at once a stunning biography and a glittering portrait of early twentieth-century Manhattan.

A major voice in the architectural culture of the fifties and sixties, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy was uniquely engaged with modernism and modernity. As the wife and collaborator of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, she was expected to provide him with the material that was crucial for his modernist mission, whilst trying to carve out her own subjectivity as a writer. As an architectural critic she was one of the early voices articulating doubts about the path modernist architecture was taking, demystifying the myths of the masters, Mies, Le Corbusier and Gropius, and questioning their heroic, masculinist approach. This book analyzes the significance of the life and work of Moholy-Nagy and explores the paradoxical aspects of the relationship between modernism and feminism. Published as part of the Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture series, which brings to light the work of significant yet overlooked figures in modernism, it is both an examination of her work and legacy, and also a study on the roles of gender and of the changing nature of modernism in its trajectory from Europe to America. Drawing on personal papers, diaries, letters and lecture notes, as well as personal interviews with relatives, colleagues and students, this study brings to light the significance of the life and work of a remarkable woman.

The Art of Football is a singular look at early college football art and illustrations. This collection contains more than two hundred images, many rare or previously unpublished, from a variety of sources, including artists Winslow Homer, Edward Penfield, J. C. Leyendecker, Frederic Remington, Charles Dana Gibson, George Bellows, and many others. Along with the rich art that captured the essence of football during its early period, Michael Oriard provides a historical context for the images and for football during this period, showing that from the beginning it was perceived more as a test of courage and training in manliness than simply an athletic endeavor. Oriard's analysis shows how these early artists had to work out for themselves-and for readers-what in the new game should be highlighted and how it should appear on the page or canvas. The Art of Football takes modern readers back to the day when players themselves were new to the sport, and illustrators had to show the public what the new game of football was. Oriard demonstrates how artists focused on football's dual nature as a grueling sport to be played and as a social event and spectacle to be watched. Through its illustrations and words The Art of Football gives readers an engaging look at the earliest depictions of the game and the origins of the United States as a football nation.