Bauhaus Imaginista is a major international project marking the centenary of this fascinating and popular school, which championed the idea of artists working together as a community. The Bauhaus reconnected art with everyday life, and was active in the fields of architecture, performance, design and visual art. Its original teachers included such renowned figures as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers. Placing a rare emphasis on the international dissemination and reception of the Bauhaus, this book accompanies a touring exhibition, and presents four chapters that extend from Bauhaus education to the school's diverse history beyond Europe. Rethinking the Bauhaus school from a global perspective, it sets the school's entanglements against a century of geopolitical change. The reader is taken to art and design museums, campus galleries and art institutes in India, Japan, China, Russia, Brazil and the United States, as well as Berlin.

Sigfried Giedion's small but vocal manifesto Befreites Wohnen (1929) is an early manifestation of modernist housing ideology and as such is key to the broader understanding of the ambitions of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) and the debate on the industrialization of construction processes and its impact on public housing at the beginning of the twentieth century. An important step in Giedion's rise as one of the foremost propagators of modern architecture, this manifesto is based on the argumentative power of visual comparisons, and is the only book the art historian both authored and designed. Along a facsimile edition in German, Giedion's Befreites Wohnen is presented here for the first time in English translation (by Reto Geiser and Rachel Julia Engler). It is completed with annotations and a scholarly essay that anchors the work in the context of its time and suggests the book's relevance for contemporary architectural discourse.

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.

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.

In this highly original study, Jeremy Braddock focuses on collective forms of modernist expression--the art collection, the anthology, and the archive--and their importance in the development of institutional and artistic culture in the United States.

Using extensive archival research, Braddock's study synthetically examines the overlooked practices of major American art collectors and literary editors: Albert Barnes, Alain Locke, Duncan Phillips, Alfred Kreymborg, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, Katherine Dreier, and Carl Van Vechten. He reveals the way collections were devised as both models for modernism's future institutionalization and culturally productive objects and aesthetic forms in themselves. Rather than anchoring his study in the familiar figures of the individual poet, artist, and work, Braddock gives us an entirely new account of how modernism was made, one centered on the figure of the collector and the practice of collecting.

"Collecting as Modernist Practice" demonstrates that modernism's cultural identity was secured not so much through the selection of a canon of significant works as by the development of new practices that shaped the social meaning of art. Braddock has us revisit the contested terrain of modernist culture prior to the dominance of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the university curriculum so that we might consider modernisms that could have been. Offering the most systematic review to date of the Barnes Foundation, an intellectual genealogy and analysis of "The New Negro" anthology, and studies of a wide range of hitherto ignored anthologies and archives, Braddock convincingly shows how artistic and literary collections helped define the modernist movement in the United States.

Four major communities, four buildings constructing their identities in the contested urban space of Jerusalem. This book examines a fascinating and critical epoch in the architectural history of Jerusalem. It proposes a fresh and analytical discussion of British Mandate-era architecture by studying four buildings that have had a lasting impact on Jerusalem's built environment. Applying relational history methodology, the book reveals how these building projects evolved as an outcome of cross-cultural influences and relations among the British, American, Jewish-Zionist and Muslim-Palestinian communities. Further, the building and design processes behind these structures give new perspectives on the adaptation of modern architecture in the Middle East and the negotiation of historicism and vernacular architecture during the first half of the 20th century.

This vibrant book tells the history of the Modernist design movement and how it completely revolutionized graphic design. Graphic Design as an artistic genre wasn't universally accepted until the early 20th century. This striking book focuses on the pivotal years of 1919-1933 to show how fifty artists redefined the field and helped create modern graphic design. Art historian and graphic artist Alston Purvis provides a concise and engaging overview of the dawn of modern graphic design and the artistic possibilities that were laid bare in a seismically shifting Europe. He explores how a variety of burgeoning and established movements contributed to the innovations of graphic design such as the German Dadaists, the Bauhaus School, and the European avant-garde artists. He looks at how groundbreaking trends in typography, the rise of consumerism, and a new focus on schools of graphic design combined to create a new language of design that is still in use today. Featuring the designs of 50 pioneering artists, such as Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, and El Lissitzky, this book shows how their work in color, typography, and composition broke conventions and set new standards in a seminal period of graphic design.

Beautifully designed and featuring breathtaking photography, this is the ultimate Christmas gift for home design enthusiasts - from cultural phenomenon THE MODERN HOUSE! 'A source of fascination, inspiration and fantasy' Guardian In 2005, childhood friends Matt Gibberd and Albert Hill set out to convince people of the power of good design and its ability to influence our wellbeing. They founded The Modern House - in equal parts an estate agency, a publisher and a lifestyle brand - and went on to inspire a generation to live more thoughtfully and beautifully at home. As The Modern House grew, Matt and Albert came to realise that the most successful homes they encountered - from cleverly conceived studio flats to listed architectural masterpieces - had been designed with attention to the same timeless principles: Space, Light, Materials, Nature and Decoration. In this lavishly illustrated book, Matt tells the stories of these remarkable living spaces and their equally remarkable owners, and demonstrates how the five principles can be applied to your own space in ways both large and small. Revolutionary in its simplicity, and full of elegance, humour and joy, this book will inspire you to find happiness in the place you call home. PRAISE FOR THE MODERN HOUSE: 'One of the best things in the world' GQ 'The Modern House transformed our search for the perfect home' Financial Times 'Nowhere has mastered the art of showing off the most desirable homes for both buyers and casual browsers alike than The Modern House' Vogue

Mervyn Taylor - wood engraver, painter, illustrator, sculptor and designer - was one of the most celebrated New Zealand artists of the 1930s to 1960s. He was highly connected to modernism and nationalism as it was expressed in New Zealand art and literature of the period. In the 1960s he created twelve murals for major new government and civic buildings erected in that era of great economic prosperity, during which New Zealand first began to loosen its apron-string ties to England. Tragically, some have been destroyed and others presumed lost - until now. This fascinating book, bursting with archival material, details the detective hunt for the murals and tells the stories of their creation. They cement Taylor's place as one of New Zealand's most significant artists, and are a celebration of the art and culture of our modernist era.

The early twentieth century is usually remembered as an era of rising nationalism and military hostility, culminating in the disaster of the First World War. Yet it was marked also by a vigorous campaign against war, a movement that called into question the authority of the nation-state. This book explores the role of artists and writers in the formation of a modern, secular peace movement in Britain, and the impact of ideas about "positive peace" on their artistic practice. From Grace Brockington's meticulous study emerges a rich and interconnected world of Hellenistic dance, symbolist stage design, marionettes, and book illustration, produced in conscious opposition to the values of an increasingly regimented and militaristic society, and radically different from existing narratives of British wartime culture. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Before the Bauhaus re-evaluates the political, architectural, and artistic cultures of pre-World War I Germany. As contradictory and conflict-ridden as the German Second Reich itself, the world of architects, craftsmen and applied-arts 'artists' were not immune to the expansionist, imperialist, and capitalist struggles that transformed Germany in the quarter-century leading up to the First World War. In this study, John Maciuika brings together architectural and design history, political history, social and cultural geography. He substantially revises our understanding of the roots of the Bauhaus and, by extension, the historical roots of twentieth-century German architecture and design. His book sheds new light on hotly contested debates pertaining to the history of Germany in the pre-World War I era, notably the issues surrounding 'modernity' and 'anti-modernity' in Wilhelmine Germany, the character and effectiveness of the government administration, and the role played by the nation's most important architects, members of the rising bourgeois class, in challenging the traditional aristocracy at the top of the new German economic and social order.

The infamous literary hoax that fooled the art world On January 8 1960, artist Nat Tate set out to burn his entire life's work. Four days later he jumped off a Staten Island ferry, killing himself. His body was never found. When William Boyd published his biography of Abstract Expressionist Nat Tate, tributes poured in from a whole host of artists and critics in the New York art world. They toasted the troubled genius in a Manhattan launch party attended by David Bowie and Gore Vidal. But Nat Tate never existed. The book was a hoax. Will Boyd's biography of a fake artist is a brilliant probe into the politics of authenticity and reputation in the modern art scene. It is a playful and intelligent insight into the fascinating, often cryptic world of modern art.

Founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, the Bauhaus School had an enormous impact on the arts and everyday life. Fifty of the most representative pieces of Bauhaus art and design are presented here in illuminating and engrossing two-page spreads. This book selects the artists, buildings, furniture pieces, theatrical productions, toys, and textiles that epitomize the Bauhaus ideal of uniting form and function. Artists such as Josef Albers, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Wassily Kandinsky, and Joost Schmidt are featured along with lesser-known but equally important designers and artists. Anyone interested in the history and accomplishments of the Bauhaus will find much to learn and enjoy in this unique compilation that reveals the movement's range as well as its influence on today's artistic practices.