The Avant-Garde Monument

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Sascha Bru

Abstract This article homes in on monuments designed by proponents of the historical or classic avant-gardes. After the First World War, monuments by, among others, Kurt Schwitters and Johannes Baader, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, Vladimir Tatlin and El Lissitzky, Man Ray and Salvador Dalí, began to articulate a new function for the genre of the monument: no longer was it to commemorate the past, but to memorialize the present and time to come. This new architecture of memory also led to an expansion of the genre, which in the hands of avant-gardists further came to include temporary pavilions. Paying attention to theoretical writings on the monument, among others, by László Moholy-Nagy, Siegfried Giedion and Robert Smithson, the article concludes by referencing more recent experimentation in monument design by artists such as Flavin, Oldenburg and Hirschhorn, arguing that a comprehensive history of the avant-garde monument is long overdue.

Author(s):  
Анастасия Юрьевна Королева

Статья посвящена изучению картины Эрнста Людвига Кирхнера Потсдамская площадь . Автор ставит своей задачей исследование историко-культурного контекста произведения, занимающего столь важное положение в истории немецкого искусства. Это полотно, написанное в год начала Первой мировой войны, обобщает впечатления недавно приехавшего в Берлин художника от сверхинтенсивной жизни германской столицы последних предвоенных лет. В статье подробно рассматривается история возникновения и роль площади в культурном и мифологическом ландшафте города, анализируется социальный статус героев картины, отмечаются автобиографические коннотации и характерные для нее формально-стилевые приемы. В результате автор приходит к выводу об особом значении образа города в лице Потсдамской площади как символа эпохи. In researching of painting of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Potsdamer Platz the author sets a task to find out all of historical and cultural aspects of this so important picture in German art. It was painted in the year of the beginning of the First World War, after a few year of the artists arriving in Berlin and become the kind of generalization of Kirchners impressions of the extremely intense life of German capital in the latest prewar years. The article gives the attention to the history of the square and its role in the cultural and mythological landscape of the city. Also it analyzes the social status of the main personas, notes the autobiographical aspects and specific formal and stylistic receptions. The results shows, that the image of town in the face of Potsdamer Platz becomes a symbol of the epoch.


Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parker

Edna St. Vincent Millay occupies an uncomfortable position in relation to modernism. In the majority of criticism, her work is considered the antithesis to modernist experimentation: as representative of the ‘rearguard’ that rejected vers libre in favour of fixed poetic forms. Indeed, most critics concur that whilst Millay’s subject matter may have been modern and daring—voicing women’s sexual independence, for instance—her form was decidedly traditional. Millay also troubles notions of modernist impersonality by writing seemingly autobiographical lyrics that showcase feminine emotions. In this paper, I aim to challenge this view of Millay by focussing on the two avant-garde works that mark the outset and the zenith of her career: Aria da Capo (1921) and Conversation at Midnight (1937). These works are both formally innovative, blurring the boundaries between poetry and drama, causing Edmund Wilson to complain that Millay had “gone to pieces”. Moreover, both works engage in performances of masculinity, with women all but absent. Aria da Capo, first performed by the Provincetown Players in 1919, dramatizes the conflict between two shepherds as an allegory for the First World War. Conversation ventriloquises an all-male dinner party, ranging through the political issues of the Depression era and foreshadowing the war to come. I use both works to argue that Millay has a more interesting relationship to masculinity and modernism than has been hitherto captured by critics. Millay voices men in innovative ways, radically challenging constructions of both gender and poetic form in the process.


2018 ◽  
pp. 427-434
Author(s):  
Belén Atencia Conde-Pumpido

During the first half of the XX Century, the First World War constitutes the most unexpected and horrific episode in the history of Europe to date. Paris, at the time undisputed capital of the european avant-garde, slumps into cultural depression due to the closure of its galleries, salons and reviews, while trade in the art world also comes to an almost complete standstill. In a xenophobic atmosphere where certain artistic movements are viewed as being of predominantly German rather than French influence, a new Art dealer, prepared to champion the new cubist art, appears on the scene.


2016 ◽  
Vol 71 (01) ◽  
pp. 61-78
Author(s):  
Tait Keller

This article represents an initial foray into the global environmental history of the First World War and suggests new approaches that can change our understanding of the conflict. With ravaged farmlands, charred trees, and muddy quagmires as iconic images of the First World War, scholars have generally tended to overlook the place and the role of nature. Yet only by taking the environment into account can we fully understand the trauma of war and how this conflict in particular shaped the most basic levels of human existence for years to come. Armies in the First World War were both social and biological entities, which depended on a “military ecology” of energy extraction, production, and supply. To keep soldiers and machines in action, belligerent states commandeered food and fuel throughout the biosphere, extending the war's environmental reach far beyond the western front. Examining a number of the ways that war shaped the periphery—evolving disease ecologies in colonial Africa, tin extraction in Southeast Asia, and food production in Latin America—will show that the boundaries of belligerency were vast. These three regions also illustrate the different ways in which the preparation and pursuit of war transformed societies and the natural world. Seeing what George Kennan called the twentieth century's “seminal catastrophe” from an environmental perspective illuminates the global dimensions of the First World War. The conflict accelerated environmental change that had begun in the previous century and established the patterns of military-industrial production, human victimization, and environmental exploitation that defined the twentieth century.


Archaeology ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 128-137
Author(s):  
Olena Popelnytska

In the archives of The National Museum of History of Ukraine in the fund No. 4 (K. V. Bolsunovskyi) there are personal documents of the famous local historian and museum figure Stepan Leontiiovych Drozdov, among them — five letters of the famous archaeologist Valeria Yevhenivna Kozlovska. This correspondence is a fragment of V. Ye. Kozlovska’s archive, part of which is now outside Ukraine, or is scattered across the personal archives of Ukrainian scientists who were a part of V. Ye. Kozlovska’s circle of contacts and have not yet been introduced into scientific circulation. Therefore, each new revealed letter of V. Ye. Kozlovska has a significant scientific value as a source for the biography of this outstanding personality and scientist. The earliest of V. Ye. Kozlovska’s letters to S. L. Drozdov is dated by June 14, 1916; there was mentioned the evacuation of the Kyiv Art, Industrial and Scientific Museum collections during the First World War. The next four letters concerned the activities of the expedition of the All-Ukrainian Archaeological Committee in 1929 in Bilotserkivshchyna. In addition to V. Ye. Kozlovska — the head of the expedition, it included F. M. Ivanov and J. F. Maslun — employees of the Bilotserkivskyi District Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, V. A. Mazur — an employee of the T. Shevchenko All-Ukrainian Historical Museum, a draftsman (whose surname is not mentioned in the letters) and a certain Mykola Mykhailovych was also mentioned in the letters — obviously M. M. Tkachenko — an employee of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and the husband of V. Ye. Kozlovska. In a letter dated by May 14, 1929, V. Ye. Kozlovska appealed to S. L. Drozdov with a proposal to conduct joint excavations of the All-Ukrainian Archaeological Committee and the Bila Tserkva Museum. In a letter dated by September 22, 1929, V. Ye. Kozlovska informed S. L. Drozdov that she would be able to arrive to Didivshchyna village not earlier than in September 28. The place of writing the letter dated by October 3, 1929 is the corner of Zalissia in Didivshchyna village. The letter mentions the arrival of S. L. Drozdov for excavations, finds of an iron knife and two male burials, packing archaeological finds in boxes. V. Ye. Kozlovska also asked S. L. Drozdov to find in Bila Tserkva a technique for drawing excavation plans. In the letter dated by October 18, 1929 there was informed about the packing of a cut-out of the hearth of the stove from the investigated dwelling and about V. Ye. Kozlovska’s intention to come to Bila Tserkva in November 1 for ready-made drawings of the excavations.


2000 ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
R. Soloviy

In the history of religious organizations of Western Ukraine in the 20-30th years of the XX century. The activity of such an early protestant denominational formation as the Ukrainian Evangelical-Reformed Church occupies a prominent position. Among UCRC researchers there are several approaches to the preconditions for the birth of the Ukrainian Calvinistic movement in Western Ukraine. In particular, O. Dombrovsky, studying the historical preconditions for the formation of the UREC in Western Ukraine, expressed the view that the formation of the Calvinist cell should be considered in the broad context of the Ukrainian national revival of the 19th and 20th centuries, a new assessment of the religious factor in public life proposed by the Ukrainian radical activists ( M. Drahomanov, I. Franko, M. Pavlik), and significant socio-political, national-cultural and spiritual shifts caused by the events of the First World War. Other researchers of Ukrainian Calvinism, who based their analysis on the confessional-polemical approach (I.Vlasovsky, M.Stepanovich), interpreted Protestantism in Ukraine as a product of Western cultural and religious influences, alien to Ukrainian spirituality and culture.


2020 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Magdalena Strąk

The work aims to show a peculiar perspective of looking at photographs taken on the eve of the broadly understood disaster, which is specified in a slightly different way in each of the literary texts (Stefan Chwin’s autobiographical novel Krótka historia pewnego żartu [The brief history of a certain joke], a poem by Ryszard Kapuściński Na wystawie „Fotografia chłopów polskich do 1944 r.” [At an exhibition “The Polish peasants in photographs to 1944”] and Wisława Szymborska’s Fotografia z 11 września [Photograph from September 11]) – as death in a concentration camp, a general concept of the First World War or a terrorist attack. Upcoming tragic events – of which the photographed people are not yet aware – become for the subsequent recipient an inseparable element of reality contained in the frame. For the later observers, privileged with time perspective, the characters captured in the photograph are already victims of the catastrophe, which in reality was not yet recorded by the camera. It is a work about coexistence of the past and future in the field of photography.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josephine Botting

The creation and viewing of war films was one of the elements in the process by which Britain attempted to come to terms with the horrors of the First World War. During the interwar period, war films took two main forms: those which reconstructed famous battles and melodramas set against a wartime backdrop. However, the film Blighty, directed by Adrian Brunel in 1927, took a slightly different approach, focusing not on military action but on those who stayed behind on the Home Front. As a director during the silent period, Brunel trod a stony path, operating largely on the fringes of the industry and never really getting a firm foothold in the developing studio structure. He remains well regarded for his independent productions yet also directed five features for Gainsborough at the end of the silent period. Of these film, his first, Blighty, is perhaps his most successful production within the studio system in terms of managing a compromise between his desire to maintain control while also fulfilling the studio's aims and requirement for box office success. Brunel's aversion to the war film as a genre meant that from the start of the project, he was engaged in a process of negotiation with the studio in order to preserve as far as possible what he regarded as a certain creative and moral imperative.


Author(s):  
Felix S. Kireev

Boris Alexandrovich Galaev is known as an outstanding composer, folklorist, conductor, educator, musical and public figure. He has a great merit in the development of musical culture in South Ossetia. All the musical activity of B.A. Galaev is studied and analyzed in detail. In most of the biographies of B.A. Galaev about his participation in the First World War, there is only one proposal that he served in the army and was a bandmaster. For the first time in historiography the participation of B.A. Galaev is analyzed, and it is found out what positions he held, what awards he received, in which battles he participated. Based on the identified documentary sources, for the first time in historiography, it occured that B.A. Galaev was an active participant in the First World War on the Caucasian Front. He went on attacks, both on foot and horse formation, was in reconnaissance, maintained communication between units, received military awards. During this period, he did not have time to study his favorite music, since, according to the documents, he was constantly at the front, in the battle formations of the advanced units. He had to forget all this heroic past and tried not to mention it ever after. Therefore, this period of his life was not studied by the researchers of his biography. For writing this work, the author uses the Highest Orders on the Ranks of the Military and the materials of the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RSMHA).


2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer

Het wordt in de historiografie van de Vlaamse beweging aanvaard dat Hendrik Conscience door de Brusselse progressieve vereniging ‘De Veldbloem’ in 1872 werd gevraagd om te kandideren voor de parlementaire verkiezingen. Conscience zou dat geweigerd hebben. Dit is uiteraard geen onbetekenend feit in de biografie van de man die ‘zijn volk leerde lezen’.Dit gegeven is terug te voeren op de geschriften van Antoon Jacob (°1889) van na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Jacob werd beschouwd als een autoriteit inzake Conscience. Maar waar is het bewijs? Hij verwees daarbij naar “uitvoerige correspondentie” maar die is niet te vinden. Het ADVN slaagde erin om de archivalische nalatenschap van de in 1947 gestorven Jacob te verwerven. Daarin bleken heel wat brieven van en aan Conscience te zitten. De briefwisseling met ‘De Veldbloem’ was onderwerp van deze bijdrage. Daarin is geen spoor te vinden van de poging om Conscience op het politieke strijdtoneel te brengen in Brussel. Daarbij moet de vraag gesteld worden hoe Jacob deze archiefstukken verzamelde en wat ermee is gebeurd tijdens zijn turbulente leven en talrijke omzwervingen. Het is best mogelijk dat er een en ander is verloren gegaan. Toch is deze nalatenschap een belangrijke aanwinst voor de studie van de geschiedenis van de Vlaamse beweging en die van Conscience in het bijzonder. ________ The Brussels association ‘De Veldbloem’ seeks contact with Hendrik Conscience. Two recently discovered letters It is an accepted fact in the historiography of the Flemish Movement that the Brussels progressive Association ‘De Veldbloem’ [=the Wildflower] asked Hendrik Conscience in 1872 to be their candidate for the parliamentary elections. It is said that Hendrik Conscience refused the request. This is of course a very significant fact in the biography of the man ‘who taught his people to read.’ This information may be inferred from the writings of Antoon Jacob (°1889) from the period after the First World War. Jacob was regarded as an authority on Conscience. But where is the evidence of this? In his claim, he referred to ‘extensive correspondence’, but that correspondence is not extant. The ADVN managed to acquire the archival legacy of Jacob who died in 1947. It turned out that it included quite a number of letters to and from Conscience. The exchange of letters with ‘De Veldbloem’ was the subject of this contribution. It contains no trace of the attempt to bring Conscience into the political arena in Brussels. It raises the question how Jacob collected these archival documents and what happened to them during his turbulent life and his many peregrinations.  It is certainly possible that some documents have been lost. However, this legacy is still an important acquisition for the study of the history of the Flemish Movement and of Conscience in particular.


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