Modernist Aesthetics in Transition Visual Culture of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Deborah Ascher Barnstone is Professor and Head of Architecture at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is co-editor of the Visual Cultures and German Contexts series.
Donna West Brett is Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is author of Photography and Place: Seeing and Not Seeing Germany After 1945 (2016); and co-editor with Natalya Lusty of Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images (2019).
Uniting leading scholars in the Weimar avant-garde and Nazi modernism, this timely collection helps us better understand the continuities as much as the disruptions between the periodsâ aesthetic styles and schools. Such precise analyses of celebrated works and forgotten resistance require us to challenge many long-held assumptions about artists caught in turbulent political times.
Randall Halle, Klaus Jonas Professor of German Film and Cultural Studies, University of Pittsburgh, USA
This marvellous anthology counters conventional wisdom that cultural production in the Weimar and Nazi eras was either traditional and conservative or radically modernist. A must-read for all scholars of German history and visual culture in the 1920s and 1930s, it proves that there were often significant aesthetic overlaps between old and new forms of art in these turbulent times.
Maria Makela, Professor Emerita of History of Art and Visual Culture, California College of the Arts, USA
Germanyâs transition from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism is too often posited as a total break with the past. With its stellar contributions from a global cast of scholars, this book offers a new narrative through outstanding, in-depth case studies drawn from diverse spheres including art, architecture, film, sculpture, cabaret, erotic photography, and colour theory.
Elizabeth Otto, Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art History, The University at Buffalo, USA
How did German aesthetic values change during the Weimar Republic and after its immediate collapse at the beginning of the National Socialist period? Contrary to conventional narratives that depict modernist aesthetics as static, shaping principles of modern art and design, this volume argues for their complexity and ever-shifting nature.
Illuminating the vital exchanges that occurred across multiple art forms during a period of unmatched cultural activity, this multi-disciplinary volume explores the cultural transition between Weimar- and National Socialist-era Germany and offers a fresh perspective on the fate of modernism during a time of censorship and social stigma. Featuring essays on architecture, painting, photography, film, sculpture, cabaret, typography, and commercial design, the volume explores competing and comparable themes across German art from 1919-1945 and addresses how modern approaches like New Vision coexisted with more traditional and established artistic modes.
Such visual complexity is evident from the volumeâs eclectic coverage: these include âsexologyâ and eroticism, visual grammar in typography and architecture, the reception of Weimar art in the National Socialist period, and the formation and transformation of queer and Jewish identities. The volume encompasses subjects as different as shadow in the animated films of Lotte Reininger, filmic adaptations of Heinrich Zilleâs social commentary in the 1920s, the photography of LĂĄszlĂł Moholy-Nagy, and depictions of female sexuality in Magnus Hirschfeldâs oeuvre. By bridging multiple artistic fields, this highly interdisciplinary work provides a fresh perspective on the ever-changing art and aesthetic principles of early-20th-century Germany.
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Shadow Schein and Scherenschnitte: Lotte Reiniger and the Silhouettes of Early Weimar, Erin Maynes (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA)
2. Cinema of the Underprivileged: Heinrich Zilleâs Influence on Weimar Street Film, AndrĂŠas-Benjamin Seyfert (UCLA, USA)
3. Moholy-Nagy: Shadows and Space-Time, Donna West Brett (The University of Sydney, Australia)
4. Female Sexuality, Sex Research and the Visual Arts, Birgit Lang and Eliza Coyle (The University of Melbourne, Australia)
5. In Pursuit of Beauty: ManassĂŠ and Erotic Photography in the Weimar and Nazi Eras, Camilla Smith (University of Birmingham, UK)
6. Visual Diversity within Gleichschaltung? The Diffusion of âNew Typographyâ during the Interwar Period in Germany, Patrick RĂśssler (University of Erfurt, Germany)
7. The Case of Color in 1920s and 1930s German Architecture, Deborah Ascher Barnstone (The University of Sydney, Australia)
8. Altars to Ambition: The Triptych Revival in Late Weimar and National Socialist Germany, Peter Chametzky (University of South Carolina, USA)
9. Cabaret in Transition: Ilse Boisâ Parodies Between the Times and Between the Genres, Mila Ganeva (Miami University, USA)
10. The Case of Breker: Sculpture Reception, 1919 â 1943, Nina LĂźbbren (Anglia Ruskin University, UK)
11. Flamboyantly Gay, Jewish and Avant-garde: Alfred Flecthheimâs Dealing with Transitional Aesthetics, Transsexualities and Antisemitism, Fae Brauer (University of East London Centre for Cultural Research, UK)
Index
Visual Cultures and German Contexts publishes innovative research into visual culture in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, as well as in diasporic linguistic and cultural communities outside of these geographic, historical, and political borders.
The series invites scholarship by academics, curators, architects, artists, and designers across all media forms and time periods. It engages with traditional methods in visual culture analysis as well as inventive interdisciplinary approaches. It seeks to encourage a dialogue amongst scholars in traditional disciplines with those pursuing innovative interdisciplinary and intermedial research. Of particular interest are provocative perspectives on archival materials, original scholarship on emerging and established creative visual fields, investigations into time-based forms of aesthetic expression, and new readings of history through the lens of visual culture. The series offers a much-needed venue for expanding how we engage with the field of Visual Culture in general.
Proposals for monographs, edited volumes, and outstanding research studies by established as well as emerging writers from a wide range of comparative, theoretical and methodological perspectives are welcome.
Series Editors
Deborah Ascher Barnstone is Professor and Head of the school of Architecture, Design, and Planning at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is on the editorial board of The Art Journal of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand and has published widely in scholarly journals such as Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Architecture, and New German Critique. Recent monographs are: Beyond the Bauhaus: Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918-1933 (2016) and The Break with the Past: Avant-garde Architecture in Germany, 1910â1925 (2018).
Thomas O. Haakenson is Associate Professor in Critical Studies and Visual Studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Oakland, USA. He serves as Vice President of the U.S. Fulbright Association's Chapter Advisory Board, as well as on the Advisory Board and on the Summer Workshop Program Committee for the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany. He has been published widely, including in New German Critique, Cabinet, Rutgers Art Review, German Studies Review, and the anthologies Legacies of Modernism, Spectacle, Representations of German Identity as well as Memorialization in Germany Since 1945.
Advisory Board Members
Donna West Brett, University of Sydney, Australia
Nina LĂźbbren, Anglia Ruskin University, UK
Patrizia C. McBride, Cornell University, USA
Elizabeth Otto, University at Buffalo SUNY, USA
Annette F. Timm, University of Calgary, Canada
James A. van Dyke, University of Missouri, USA
Randall Halle, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Christophe Kone, Williams College, USA
Paul Jaskot, Duke University, USA
Qinna Shen, Bryn Mawr College, USA
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Deborah Ascher Barnstone is Professor and Head of Architecture at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is co-editor of the Visual Cultures and German Contexts series.
Donna West Brett is Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is author of Photography and Place: Seeing and Not Seeing Germany After 1945 (2016); and co-editor with Natalya Lusty of Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images (2019).