The first publication to focus on the Art Institute's outstanding collection of American modernism, this volume includes over 175 important paintings, sculptures, decorative-art objects, and works on paper made in North America between World War II and 1955. Together they fully reflect the history of American art in these decades, including examples of early modernism, Social Realism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. Among the paintings are such iconic works as Hopper's Nighthawks and Wood's American Gothic, along with notable pieces by Davis, De Kooning, Hartley, Lawrence, Marin, O'Keeffe, Pollock, and Sheeler. Among the sculptors represented are Calder, Cornell, and Noguchi. Spectacular decorative artwork by the Eameses, Grotell, Neutra, Saarinen, F. L. Wright, and Zeisel are also featured. Reproduced in full color, each work is accompanied by an accessible and up-to-date text, complete with comparative illustrations. The introduction traces the formation of this important collection by a number of noted curators, collectors, and patrons. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

The architecture of post-war Modernism poses particular challenges for building research and heritage preservation. Should its methods be adapted to the often prefabricated nature of the buildings? How should we rate these buildings, of which there are still a great many in existence, in terms of monument preservation? What challenges does modernizing them pose? Can individual components be replaced with mass-produced items without this detracting from the building's heritage-listed status? What are the risks in relation to certain materials that have since come to be classified as toxic? What strategies of knowledge distribution should be applied for buildings of post-war Modernism? At the MONUMENTO in Salzburg in 2018 and 2020, seasoned experts addressed these fundamental issues of preserving listed buildings with reference to selected projects.

The book investigates the theme of Modernism (1920-1960 and its epigones) as an integral part of tangible and intangible cultural heritage which contains the result of a whole range of disciplines whose aim is to identify, document and preserve the memory of the past and the value of the future. Including several chapters, it contains research results relating to cultural heritage, more specifically Modernism, and current digital technologies. This makes it possible to record and evaluate the changes that both undergo: the first one, from a material point of view, the second one from the research point of view, which integrates the traditional approach with an innovative one. The purpose of the publication is to show the most recent studies on the modernist lexicon 100 years after its birth, moving through different fields of cultural heritage: from different forms of art to architecture, from design to engineering, from literature to history, representation and restoration. The book appeals to scholars and professionals who are involved in the process of understanding, reading and comprehension the transformation that the places have undergone within the period under examination. It will certainly foster the international exchange of knowledge that characterized Modernism

South African artist Irma Stern (1894-1966) is one of the nation's most enigmatic modern figures. Stern held conservative political positions on race even as her subjects openly challenged racism and later the apartheid regime. Using paintings, archival research, and new interviews, this book explores how Stern became South Africa's most prolific painter of Black, Jewish, and Colored (mixed-race) life while maintaining controversial positions on race. Through her art, Stern played a crucial role in both the development of modernism in South Africa and in defining modernism as a global movement. Spanning the Boer War to Nazi Germany to apartheid South Africa and into the contemporary #RhodesMustFall movement, Irma Stern's work documents important twentieth-century cultural and political moments. More than fifty years after her death, Stern's legacy challenges assumptions about race, gender roles, and religious identity and how they are represented in art history.

With an emphasis on painting and sculpture made in the United States between 1910 and 1950, this gorgeously illustrated volume offers a rich introduction to American modernism through the world-class collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The lively text, which includes previously unpublished archival photos, examines the roles that the museum and the city of Philadelphia played in promoting modernism from its inception. Works by internationally acclaimed artists from the circle of photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz, including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Sheeler, are featured here alongside works by artists left outside the mainstream of art history. The book draws visual connections across works by these artists while creating compelling juxtapositions that tell a story of modern American art that is unique to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Published in association with the Philadelphia Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Philadelphia Museum of Art (04/18/18-09/03/18)

Maurice Blanchot and Theodor W. Adorno are among the most difficult but also the most profound thinkers in twentieth-century aesthetics. While their methods and perspectives differ widely, they share a concern with the negativity of the artwork conceived in terms of either its experience and possibility or its critical expression. Such negativity is neither nihilistic nor pessimistic but concerns the status of the artwork and its autonomy in relation to its context or its experience. For both Blanchot and Adorno negativity is the key to understanding the status of the artwork in post-Kantian aesthetics and, although it indicates how art expresses critical possibilities, albeit negatively, it also shows that art bears an irreducible ambiguity such that its meaning can always negate itself. This ambiguity takes on an added material significance when considered in relation to language as the negativity of the work becomes aesthetic in the further sense of being both sensible and experimental, and in doing so the language of the literary work becomes a form of thinking that enables materiality to be thought in its ambiguity. In a series of rich and compelling readings, William S. Allen shows how an original and rigorous mode of thinking arises within Blanchot's early writings and how Adorno's aesthetics depends on a relation between language and materiality that has been widely overlooked. Furthermore, by reconsidering the problem of the autonomous work of art in terms of literature, a central issue in modernist aesthetics is given a greater critical and material relevance as a mode of thinking that is abstract and concrete, rigorous and ambiguous. While examples of this kind of writing can be found in the works of Blanchot and Beckett, the demands that such texts place on readers only confirm the challenges and the possibilities that literary autonomy poses to thought.

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, Dali, 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)

Situated in a Mediterranean landscape, the Maeght Foundation is a unique Modernist museum, product of an extraordinary collaboration between the architect, Jose Luis Sert, and the artists whose work was to be displayed there. The architecture, garden design and art offer a rare opportunity to see work in settings conceived in active collaboration with the artists themselves. By focusing on the relationship between this art foundation and its Arcadian setting, including Joan Miro's labyrinth, George Braque's pool, Tal-Coat's mosaic wall and Giacometti's terrace, Jan K. Birksted demonstrates how the building articulates many of the ideas that preoccupied this group of artists during the culminating years of their lives. The study pays special attention to the ways in which architecture can shape the experience of time, and addresses the Modernist desire for wilderness and its problematic roots in the classical Mediterranean ideal. In showing how the design of the Maeght Foundation is a Modernist representation of Mediterranean culture, the author has developed an interpretation of architecture that accommodates not only the architect's handling of material or function, but shows as well how it can be the embodiment of a particular vision of space and time.

Joze Plecnik (1872-1957) studierte bei Otto Wagner in Wien. 1911 ubernahm er den Lehrstuhl von Jan Kotera in Prag. Seine Wiener Bauten sind Landmarken, in Prag wurde er zum Architekten der Prager Burg, und in den 1920er-Jahren begann er den Umbau seiner Heimatstadt Ljubljana. UEber Plecnik wurde viel geforscht und publiziert. Valenas Betrachtungen zeigen jedoch neue Aspekte seines Schaffens auf: sein Wirken in Prag, den Einfluss der roemisch-italienischen Inspiration in seinem Werk, den Umgang mit "naturlichem" Gelande, die Rolle des Bestands bei der Entwicklung neuer liturgischer Raumkonzepte in Kirchenumbauten und die Frage, inwiefern es bei "Plecniks Ljubljana" angemessen ist, von humanistischem Stadtumbau zu sprechen - die Themen des neuen Plecnik-Buchs sind fur Einsteiger und Experten gleichermassen interessant.

Die Zentralvereinigung der ArchitektInnen (ZV) wurde 1907 gegrundet. 1938 wurde der Verein aufgeloest und die Mitglieder selektiv in die NS-Reichskammer uberfuhrt, manche emigrierten. Nach Kriegsende schlossen sich ehemalige Mitglieder als Architektengruppe in der Berufsvereinigung der bildenden Kunstler zusammen, die eine wichtige Rolle in der Entnazifizierung ubernahm. Durch das Engagement in Sachen Baukultur gelang es der ZV in der Nachkriegszeit, wieder ihren Status als wichtigste Standesvertretung zu erreichen: 1957 wurden die Standesinteressen der Architektenkammer ubertragen, 1959 wurde die ZV als Verein neu gegrundet. Mit Hilfe des Wiener ZV-Archivs beleuchten Wissenschaftlerinnen erstmals den sensiblen Zeitraum von der Aufloesung 1938 bis zur Neugrundung der ZV als Verein 1959.

As the 1930s began, Alfred H. Barr Jr., founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Philip Johnson, distinguished architect, brought the principles of the Bauhaus to America - even before exiles from Nazi Germany fully established the idea of architecture and furnishings as a functional whole in the United States. Barr's organisation of the museum reflected the departmental structure of the Bauhaus, elevating architecture, graphic design, utilitarian furniture design, industrial design, photography and film to be on an equal footing with painting and sculpture, and endorsing all to be recognised as art. Barr and Johnson curated exceptional exhibitions such as Modern Architecture, International Exhibition (1932) and Machine Art (1934) at MoMA and created modern interiors in private living quarters. In this book, comprehensive essays and series of photos trace how modernism found its way into the American cultural landscape.

From the Cadillac to the Apple Mac, the skyscraper to the Tiffany lampshade, the world in which we live has been profoundly influenced for over a century by the work of American designers. But the product is only the end of a story that is full of fascinating questions. What has been the social and cultural role of design in American society? To produce useful things that consumers need? Or to persuade them to buy things that they don't need? Where does the designer stand in all this? And how has the role of design in America changed over time, since the early days of the young Republic? Jeffrey Meikle explores the social and cultural history of American design spanning over two centuries, from the hand-crafted furniture and objects of the early nineteenth century, through the era of industrialization and the mass production of the machine age, to the information-based society of the present, covering everything from the Arts and Crafts movement to Art Deco, modernism to post-modernism, MOMA to the Tupperware bowl.

As a result of its aspiration to design the world comprehensively and to take action pedagogically based on the arts, the Bauhaus established an inseparable link between architecture, design, art, and pedagogy. The effects of this in-depth desire for reform can also still be recognized in art, architecture, design, and contemporary processes of aesthetic education one hundred years after the school's founding. The resonance of the Bauhaus is thus the topic of this book. The various texts reflect on the Bauhaus from the perspectives of the history of art and design, art education, and educational science with respect to the aspects: reception in popular culture, education through design, material in teaching, and the Bauhaus as a regulative idea in the digital age.

In 1908 Peter Behrens recruited the young Walter Gropius in his architect's office - but threw him out again in 1910. Gestalt und Hinterhalt [Form and Attack] places a tongue-in-cheek focus on relationships among artists that revolved around the Bauhaus and Darmstadt's artists' colony Mathildenhoehe, Germany. We gain insights into the numerous love affairs of Alma Mahler, and follow Herbert Bayer, who set off from Darmstadt to Weimar, and soon toppled Walter Gropius's second marriage. This book narrates the story of Bauhaus in a way never told before - through not only the successes and talents of those involved, but also through their failures and failings. Text in German.

"Gardens for everyman!" was the central credo of Leberecht Migge (1881-1935), one of the most influential landscape architects of the twentieth century. His estate was thought to be lost until the discovery of more than 300 original plans and drawings in the Archives of Swiss Landscape Architecture. This book presents numerous projects, many previously unknown, ranging from large-scale plans for housing settlements to detailed designs for luxurious private gardens. Introductions to the historical period and to Migge's ideas put the plans in context. Indices of persons, places and plant names complement the text and illustrations. Two plans, reprinted at original size, accompany this volume.