Short Reviews

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-130
Author(s):  
Susan Teneriello
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
English Language ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Symbolic System ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Body Imagery ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approaches ◽  
Critical Dance Studies

Gabriele Brandstetter's Poetics of Dance has remained unavailable to English-language readers until now. Widely considered a landmark book of dance scholarship when it first appeared in Germany in 1995, this provocative analysis of the early twentieth-century avant-garde in Europe is sure to continue to influence a new audience. The book's initial publication advanced the application of critical theory and interdisciplinary approaches to dance that now constitute the field of critical dance studies. Caringly translated by Elena Polzer with Oxford Studies in Dance Theory series editor Mark Franko, this work remains a unique analysis of modernity that illuminates dance as an “act of transmission,” a bridge through theatre, literature, and visual arts altering relationships to how movement is reproduced and how space is conceptualized. Brandstetter's central premise expands through reading body imagery as a historically specific context from which the iconography of pictorial patterns open up perceptual concepts. The interdependency between new models and vocabularies of modern dance and literature appearing at the turn-of-the-twentieth century brace the argument that avant-garde aesthetic debates and concerns moved through body imagery and figurations in space. The poetics of free dance (and later forms of Expressionist dance appearing in Germany) as it took shape in Europe foregrounds the dancer's movement as a transformative language and symbolic system of cultural deconstruction and renewal.

Italian Minor Theatre, 2000–14: the Development of ‘Short Forms’ and the Politics of the Stage

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (03) ◽  
pp. 195-208
Author(s):  
Silvia Mei
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Short Forms ◽  
Research Fellow ◽  
History Of ◽  
Expressive Dimension ◽  
The University

Brevity in experimental Italian theatre is not merely an expressive dimension of scenic creation, but a forma mentis, a conceptual vocation of young companies. The 2000s produced a minor theatre in Italy – first because of the reduced stage size, and second because of the brevity of works such as installation pieces. Moving from the linguistic disintegration of the historical avant-gardes of the twentieth century, this theatre is especially inspired by the visual arts, even though its historical roots remain fragmented and art is still seen in the synthetic language of modern dance and Futurist variety. Short forms actually become a tool for crossing artistic genres and languages. Starting from Deleuze’s and Guattari’s philosophical concept of minor literature, in this article Silvia Mei explores and analyzes work by such Italian contemporary companies as gruppo nanou, Città di Ebla, Anagoor, Opera, ErosAntEros, and Teatro Sotterraneo – all representative of what can be called installation theatre, a new theatrical wave that crosses the boundaries and specificities of artistic language, leading to the deterritorialization of theatre itself, a rethinking of the artistic work as well as its relationship with the audience. Silvia Mei is Adjunct Professor of the History of Theatre Directing and Theatre Iconography at the University of Bologna, having been a Research Fellow at the University of Turin. Her recent publications include ‘La terza avanguardia: ortografie dell’ultima scena italiana’, in Culture Teatrali, No. 14 (2015), and Displace Altofest (Valletta: Malta 2018 Foundation).

The avant-garde’s visual arts in the context of Santayana’s idea of vital liberty

Human Affairs ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Skowroński
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Universe

AbstractIn the present paper, the author looks at the political dimension of some trends in the visual arts within twentieth-century avant-garde groups (cubism, expressionism, fauvism, Dada, abstractionism, surrealism) through George Santayana’s idea of vital liberty. Santayana accused the avant-gardists of social and political escapism, and of becoming unintentionally involved in secondary issues. In his view, the emphasis they placed on the medium (or diverse media) and on treating it as an aim in itself, not, as it should be, as a transmitter through which a stimulating relationship with the environment can be had, was accompanied by a focus on fragments of life and on parts of existence, and, on the other hand, by a de facto rejection of ontology and cosmology as being crucial to understanding life and the place of human beings in the universe. The avant-gardists became involved in political life by responding excessively to the events of the time, instead of to the everlasting problems that are the human lot.

scholarly journals The avant-garde in the architecture and visual arts of Post-Revolutionary Mexico

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando N. Winfield
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Mexican Architecture ◽  
Direct Reflection

Commenting on an exhibition of contemporary Mexican architecture in Rome in 1957, the polemic and highly influential Italian architectural critic and historian, Bruno Zevi, ridiculed Mexican modernism for combining Pre-Columbian motifs with modern architecture. He referred to it as ‘Mexican Grotesque’. Inherent in Zevi’s comments were an attitude towards modern architecture that defined it in primarily material terms; its principle role being one of “spatial and programmatic function”. Despite the weight of this Modernist tendency in the architectural circles of Post-Revolutionary Mexico, we suggest in this paper that Mexican modernism cannot be reduced to such “material” definitions. In the highly charged political context of Mexico in the first half of the 20th Century, modern architecture was perhaps above all else, a tool for propaganda. In this political atmosphere it was undesirable, indeed it was seen as impossible, to separate art, architecture and politics in a way that would be a direct reflection of Modern architecture’s European manifestations. Form was to follow function, but that function was to be communicative as well as spatial and programmatic. One consequence of this “political communicative function” in Mexico was the combination of the “mural tradition” with contemporary architectural design; what Zevi defined as “Mexican Grotesque”. In this paper, we will examine the political context of Post-Revolutionary Mexico and discuss what may be defined as its most iconic building; the Central Library at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico . In direct counterpoint to Zevi, we will suggest that it was far from grotesque, but rather was one of the most committed political statements made by the Modern Movement throughout the Twentieth Century. It was propaganda, it was political. It was utopian.

The Icon and Visual Arts During the Russian Religious Renaissance

2020 ◽  
pp. 411-431
Author(s):  
Clemena Antonova
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Simple Observation ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The One ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Artistic Tradition

This chapter begins from a simple observation, namely, that what has been called ‘the Russian religious renaissance of the twentieth century’ coincided in time with two important movements in the sphere of the visual arts. On the one hand, there was a sweeping revival of interest in the medieval icon at the beginning of the twentieth century, which left almost no sphere of cultural life untouched. On the other, in artistic terms, the whole period was largely defined by the advent of the Russian avant-garde. I would like to consider the junction at which these three developments overlapped, informed, influenced, even opposed and clashed with one another. According to the interpretation proposed here, it is the mixture and the coexistence of a revived Orthodoxy, a reawakened focus on the medieval artistic tradition, and the rise of avant-garde modernism that gave a unique flavour to early twentieth-century Russian culture. The debates on the function and the meaning of the icon in the period between the 1910s and the early 1920s ultimately suggested different answers to the problem of the role of religion in modernity.

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso (1876–1944)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Elena Versari
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Stage Performances ◽  
Verbal Relations ◽  
Free Word

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was founder and leader of Futurism, the first intellectual and artistic movement that explicitly defined the codes of avant-garde practice in the twentieth century. His work extended across a multiplicity of fields: journalism, poetry, literature, theater, visual arts, politics, but it’s probably his all-encompassing activity as a cultural leader and fosterer of innovation that made him one of the preeminent intellectuals of his time. He implemented and systematized the practice of diffusing avant-garde ideas through manifestos, performances, and happenings, capitalizing on a deliberately magnified antagonistic relation with the tastes of the public at large. His experimentations in visual/verbal relations and stage performances, which led to the creation of free-word poetry and synthetic theater, were pivotal for the development of new modernist codes in poetry and the performing arts.

Sport and modernism in the visual arts in Europe, c.1909-39

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Vere
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Italian Futurism ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Celebrity Status ◽  
The Press

This book highlights sport as a key inspiration for an international range of modernist artists. With sport attracting large crowds, being written about in the press, filmed and broadcast, and with its top stars enjoying celebrity status, sport has claims to be the most pervasive cultural form of the early twentieth century. Modernist artists recognised sport’s importance in their writings and production. This book examines a diverse set of paintings, photographic works, films, buildings, and writings from artists in France, Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union to establish the international appeal of the theme while acknowledging local and stylistic differences in its interpretation. From the fascination with the racing cyclist in paintings by Umberto Boccioni, Lyonel Feininger and Jean Metzinger, to the designs for stadiums in fascist Italy and the Soviet Union, the works examined are compelling both in visual and ideological terms. Encompassing studies of many avant-garde movements, including Italian futurism, cubism, German expressionism, Le Corbusier’s architecture, Soviet constructivism, Italian rationalism and the Bauhaus, this book interrogates the ways in which sport and modernism interconnect.

Modernism Under Review: Reyner Banham's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960)

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-344
Author(s):  
Tyrus Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Design Theory ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
International Style ◽  
History Of ◽  
Architecture And Design ◽  
Architectural Modernism ◽  
Modern Movement

This essay reconsiders Reyner Banham's classic study of early twentieth-century architecture and design, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, originally published in 1960. Banham surveyed the architecture, design, and visual arts of the ‘first machine age’, characterized by industrial production and motorized transportation, from a self-consciously thematized perspective within the ‘second machine age’, populated by expendable consumer technologies and images. This revisionist perspective enabled Banham to challenge long-standing myths propagated by the dominant figures of the modern movement. In his polemical emphasis on the contingency and plurality of that which had empirically transpired in first machine age, Banham rejected the reduction of the messy history of the modern movement to the victory of a putative ‘international style’. Banham reasserted the intimate connection of architectural modernism with the avant-garde artistic movements of the 1910s and 20s, emphasizing particularly the most radical ones such as expressionism, futurism, and dadaism.

Moving Modernism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nell Andrew
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Lumiere Brothers ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

This book reenacts the simultaneous eruption of three spectacular revolutions—the development of pictorial abstraction, the first modern dance, and the birth of cinema—which together changed the artistic landscape of early twentieth-century Europe and the future of modern art. Rather than seeking dancing pictures or pictures of dancing, however, this study follows the chronology of the historical avant-garde to show how dance and pictures were engaged in a kindred exploration of the limits of art and perception that required the process of abstraction. Recovering the performances, methods, and circles of aesthetic influence of avant-garde dance pioneers and experimental filmmakers from the turn of the century to the interwar period, this book challenges modernism’s medium-specific frameworks by demonstrating the significant role played by the arts of motion in the historical avant-garde’s development of abstraction: from the turn-of-the-century dancer Loïe Fuller, who awakened in symbolist artists the possibility of prolonged vision; to cubo-futurist and neosymbolist artists who reached pure abstraction in tandem with the radical dance theory of Valentine de Saint-Point; to Sophie Taeuber’s hybrid Dadaism between art and dance; to Akarova, a prolific choreographer whose dancing Belgian constructivist pioneers called “music architecture”; and finally to the dancing images of early cinematic abstraction from the Lumière brothers to Germaine Dulac. Each chapter reveals the emergence of abstractionas an apparatus of creation, perception, and reception deployed across artistic media toward shared modernist goals. The author argues that abstraction can be worked like a muscle, a medium through which habits of reception and perception are broken and art’s viewers are engaged by the kinesthetic sensation to move and be moved.

The Beginning of Dance Studies in Greece (1900–1974)

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Vasso Barboussi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Dance Studies ◽  
Greek Tradition ◽  
Professional Dance ◽  
German System

The educational system introduced in Greece during the liberation, a period known as the Bavarian Regency (1833–1862), had been, more or less, a copy of the corresponding German system of this period. Koula Pratsika (1899–1984), who established modern dance and professional dance studies in the country, participated in the Delphic festival in 1927 and was influenced by Eva Palmer. She also had been influenced by the 1930s Hellenistic ideology writers and artists. Pratsika was trying to find and develop a dance reflecting Greek tradition, revitalized and encouraged by the ancient spirit. She was inspired by Duncan regarding ancient dance as well as by many aesthetic movements, including German modern dance and the Dalcroze School where she studied. Pratsika invited German dancers to give seminars and performances in Athens. This paper will examine the birth of Greek modern dance since the beginning of the twentieth century and the influence of German culture and dance.

scholarly journals Dialogue East/West in the Russian Avant-garde and Poetics of Primitive

2021 ◽  
pp. 201-227
Author(s):  
Nataliya Zlydneva ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The West ◽  
Russian Art ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Third ◽  
Official Ideology ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
East West

The essay examines interrelation between the motif and the poetics in the visual arts, specifically,as it concerns the East / West motif and the style of primitivism in the Russian art of the twentieth century. It discussesvarious forms and meanings of this theme as presented in the works of M. Larionov, N. Goncharova, and P. Filonov. Two models are shown: the early historical avant-garde and the avant-garde of the late 1920s. If at the beginning of the century, the style is contingent on the plot and focuses mainly on the theme of the East, the primitivism of the next decade develops in the context of the Western Europeanturn towards documentary in art and therefore addresses the theme of the West. The third model describes the painting of the early 1930s when the appeal to the East, required by the order of the official ideology, gave rise to a form of primitivism as a way to escape from the pressure of socialist realism (Vasnetsov, Volkov). Conclusion: in relation to the topic East / West, primitivism acted as geopoetics of a kind, generating new meanings. Inherent dualism of the Russian culturefound a correspondence in primitivism as a borderline type of poetics.

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