Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910-1930

by Timothy O. Benson, Peter Nadas

Overview

An illustrated study of the early twentieth-century transformation from Expressionism to Constructivism and beyond in the Central European arts.

Central European Avant-Gardes presents the first interpretive overview of the complex webs of interaction among the artists and intellectuals of early twentieth-century Central Europe. The key stylistic transformation of the period was from Expressionism to Constructivism, as artists and writers, against a volatile background of war and revolution, saw the opportunity literally to construct a new world through their work. The borders between the visual arts, photography, film, architecture, poetry, and typography were obliterated, as artists sought to transcend the forces of traditionalism to forge an elemental visual language that would overcome national and linguistic boundaries. Yet at the same time that these artists advocated pluralism and unity, their work engaged issues such as nationalism and tradition that still resonate in artistic circles today.

The book, which accompanies a major exhibition organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and curated by Timothy Benson, assisted by Monika Krol, is arranged around events and situations rather than by linear, art historical categories. It features hundreds of color plates and reproductions of documents; discussions of movements from Artificialism to Zenitism; essays on figures, publications, and exhibitions; and shorter "city views" of Belgrade, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Cracow, Dessau, Ljubljana, £ódz, Poznañ, Prague, Vienna, Warsaw, Weimar, and Zagreb.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262025225
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	03/01/2002
Series:	The MIT Press
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	8.75(w) x 10.19(h) x 1.35(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Timothy O. Benson is Curator of the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Editorial Reviews

"Kruchenykh and I have illustrated some books together which are selling very well," the Russian Futurist Olga Rozanova told her sister in 1913. Although the Futurists loved the mechanized look, their books were homemade, usually stapled, and sometimes decorated with potato stamps. The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934 shows how Futurist graphics influenced the attempts of post-revolutionary Constructivists to make books that would be accessible even to the illiterate -- a style that in turn informed early Soviet propaganda. The avant-garde artists of Central Europe are less well known in the West than their Soviet counterparts; Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910-1930 attempts to fill in the blanks by showcasing other artistic movements from Poznan´ to Bucharest. "Art must become international or it will perish," proclaimed the founders of the Congress of International Progressive Artists in 1922. They were challenged immediately by a mischievous Dadaist, who remarked, "You are neither international, nor progressive, nor artists." For those who dare to enter the thicket of avant-garde manifestos, schools, and schisms, an accompanying volume, Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910-1930, contains some seven hundred pages of aesthetic dogma, much in English for the first time. "Manifesto," by the Romanian poet Sasa Pana, begins "readers, disinfect your brains," and proceeds to deliver a stream of exuberant, somewhat nonsensical free verse: "hurraaay hurraaay hurrraaaaaaay / the library trash is burning / a. et p. Chr. n. / 123456789000,000,000,000,000 kg / or rats get fat," and so on. (Leo Carey)

The New Yorker