scholarly journals Józef Patkowski at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Marianne Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Contact Point ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
New Music ◽  
Organizational Process ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Insight Into

Around 1960, the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music were an important contact point for Polish composers and musicians to the Western avant-garde after years of isolation due to the doctrine of socialist realism imposed in Poland. During this first phase of Polish participation, Józef Patkowski participated twice in the Courses. Mainly based on sources to be found in the archives of the International Music Institute Darmstadt (IMD), this article di-scusses Patkowski’s perception of the Courses as well as his lecture on New Music in Poland which he held in Darmstadt 1962, and gives an insight into the organizational process of artistic contact between Poland and a Western festival.

Restating Classicist Monumentalism in Soviet Architecture, 1930s–early 1950s

2019 ◽  
pp. 64-88
Author(s):  
William C. Brumfield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Architectural Styles ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article examines the development of retrospective styles in Soviet architecture during the Stalin era, from the 1930s to the early 1950s. This highly visible manifestation of communist visual culture is usually interpreted as a reaction to the austere modernism of 1920s Soviet avant-garde architecture represented by the constructivist movement. The project locates the origins of Stalin-era proclamatory, retrospective style in prerevolutionary neoclassical revival architecture. Although functioning in a capitalist market, that neoclassical reaction was supported by prominent critics who were suspicious of Russia’s nascent bourgeoisie and felt that neoclassical or neo-Renaissance architecture could echo the glory of imperial Russia. These critics left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, but prominent architects of the neoclassicist revival remained in the Soviet Union. Together with the Academy of Architecture (founded 1933), these architects played a critical role in reviving classicist monumentalism—designated “socialist realism”—as the proclamatory style for the centralized, neoimperial statist system of the Stalin era. Despite different ideological contexts (prerevolutionary and Stalinist), retrospective styles were promulgated as models for significant architectural projects. The article concludes with comments on the post-Stalinist—and post-Soviet—alternation of modernist and retrospective architectural styles.

“Socialist Realist” Critiques of Neoliberal “Shock Therapy”

2019 ◽  
pp. 431-451
Author(s):  
April A. Eisman
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Shock Therapy ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
German Art ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
East German ◽  
Insight Into

This article focuses on the East German artistic response to the 1973 putsch in Chile, an event now recognized as foundational in the development of neoliberalism. Outraged and saddened, artists in East Germany responded to the putsch with thousands of works of art. These works disrupt Western expectations for East German art, which was far more modern and complex than the term “socialist realism” might suggest. They also offer insight into the horrors of the putsch and remind us that there have been—and can once again be—alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. In addition to creating prints, paintings, and sculptures, East German artists organized solidarity events to raise money for Chile and spearheaded a book project with artists from sixteen communist and capitalist countries to document the event and losses suffered. This article ultimately shows that communist visual culture can serve as a model for art as an activist practice.

scholarly journals Art as a Critique of Language: On the Continuity of the Tradition of the Avant-Garde Aesthetic in the Modern and the Postmodern

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-303
Author(s):  
Susanne Kogler
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
New Music ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Traditional Language ◽  
Art Philosophy ◽  
Language Of Music ◽  
The One

That art functions as a corrective to rational-scientific insights is one of the formative thoughts of art philosophy. The fact that artistic expression represents a corrective to linguistically-rationally affected insight also ranks among the constants of art philosophy in the 20th century. “Expression is the opponent of articulating something” can be read, for instance, in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory with regards to the character of language in art and Jean François Lyotard wrote on aesthetic experience: “What happens to us is by no means something which we would have controlled, programmed or conceptually apprehended beforehand”. The uneducible, conceptually unattainable is also at the centre of current art production of the 21st century. On the basis of Lyotard’s and Adorno’s positions, the article shows that one should acknowledge a constancy of the topos of art as non-conceptual knowledge on the one hand as the continuing function of a tradition defined from the philosophical aesthetics of modernity to post-modernity and orientated on the artistic avant-garde. On the other hand and beyond this a continuous line of tradition of New Music becomes clear, leading to the expressionistic avant-garde of the 20th century which represented the starting point for Adorno’s music philosophy, through Lyotard’s focus on John Cage, up to the avant-garde of New Music in the era of post modernity. Specific features of contemporary art, such as rebellion against linguistic standards, an understanding of expressivity that opposes the traditional language of music and operates on the verge of silence, as well as the utopian vision of a modified reality which aims at transcendency enable a conception of art as non-conceptual knowledge, corresponding with the positions of art philosophy in modernity and post-modernity in important points. The relevance of focusing on this line of tradition for musicology lies in the fact that it sheds new light on the musical avant-garde and its further function and, last but not least, that it opens new perspectives in understanding contemporary artistic productions.

scholarly journals Quality of Inclusive Educational System for Work with Students with Autism Different Needs in Italy

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Vita Voitkāne
Keyword(s):  
Inclusive Education ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Education System ◽  
School System ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Students With Autism ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
General School ◽  
Insight Into

The need for realization of inclusive education, which is the basis of a sustainable education, will require new challenges in the Education System. The system used in Italy can be used as an example. Italy passed avant-garde laws concerning the integration and inclusion of special needs students into the general school system already more than thirty years ago, in the 1970s. However, even after all this time and experience, there are still unresolved problems, which testifies to the complexities of the matter. This research offers an insight into the quality of the existing Italian inclusive education system specifically in relation to students with autism. Thereby it hopes to provide educators in Latvia with food for thought about this currently important topic.

Encounter Three: Art and the Socialist State

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Jan Bryant
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Socialist State ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Market Capitalism

This chapter traces the tactics used by the art Slovenian collective, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), specifically the art section, Irwin and the music group, Laibach, to criticise the socialist state of Yugoslavia. The chapter offers a brief overview of the political climate at the time leading up to and during the Yugoslavian wars (1980s and ‘90s). Closely analysed is NSK’s use of ambiguity and parody to hold a mirror up to authoritarianism and Irwin’s appropriation of early Russian avant-garde motifs to criticise socialist-realism and the State’s ‘misuse’ of art. As protection against retaliation by the state, NSK never prescribed their intentions, so audiences and viewers needed to bring their own context and perspective to events. Once Slovenia left the Yugoslavian Federation to enter into free-market capitalism, NSKs tactics seemed far less potent, flowing neatly into a 1980s western art context (a moment in history) that embraced ambivalence and indeterminacy. As an approach that hides a work’s political intent, allowing its viewers to have their own political views affirmed, it is argued that such a tactic fails to shake the political aesthetic. [181]

Russian Modernism (1890–1934)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Douglas Clayton
Keyword(s):  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
Machine Age ◽  
Fyodor Dostoevsky ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Face ◽  
Russian Modernism ◽  
Lev Tolstoy ◽  
Important Shift

Russian modernism arose as a rejection of positivism and the realism of the major nineteenth-century Russian novelists such as Lev Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Ivan Turgenev. In its first phase it was marked by a rekindled interest in poetry, mysticism, and symbolism. There was also a tendency to seek a fusion of different forms of artistic expression: poetry, music, painting, and theatre. Playwrights reflected the move away from naturalism towards the theatricality of commedia dell’arte and metadrama (the play within the play). In prose there emerged a new decorative style and new themes such as sexuality. The Russian Revolution of 1917 signalled an important shift towards the avant-garde. Poets adopted radical new poetic forms, glorified the new machine age or hearkened back to the pre-historical roots myth, and experimented with invented, abstract language. Prose writers shifted towards a stark new factual style that incorporated documents and slogans. Their themes were the revolutionary changes in Russia and their own inadequacy in the face of the new Soviet man. The avant-garde received its death-blow with the promulgation of Socialist Realism as the mandatory style for all publishing authors at the All-Union Writers’ Conference in 1934.

Zabolotsky, Nikolai Alexeevich (1903–1958)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Syvarth
Keyword(s):  
Life Writing ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
State University ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Pedagogical Institute ◽  
Poetry Reading ◽  
Daniil Kharms

Nikolai Alexeevich Zabolotsky was a Russian poet and translator, and a member of the avant-garde absurdist group Oberiu (a modified acronym for Obedinenie Realnogo Iskusstva [Association for Real Art]). He was born in Kizicheskaya Sloboda on 7 May 1903, and died in Moscow on 14 October 1958. Zabolotsky is best known for his work with the late avant-garde, alongside Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky in their absurdist group, Oberiu. In 1920 Zabolotsky moved away from his family in Urzhum to Moscow to study medicine and philology at Moscow University. Only a year later he moved to Petrograd (now St Petersburg) and enrolled in the Pedagogical Institute of St Petersburg State University. After graduating in 1925, Zabolotsky met Kharms and Vvedensky at a poetry reading and in 1928 they formed Oberiu, a group that gained notoriety for their nonsensical verse and absurdist theatrical productions. By 1931 Oberiu’s activity began to decline under the pressure of the Stalinist purges and the officially sanctioned Socialist Realism. In 1938 Zabolotsky was arrested in one of Stalin’s purges for his anti-Leninist philosophic views and sent to Siberia. He spent much of his time in Siberia working on his translation of the Kievian Rus’ epic, The Lay of Igor’s Host. Twelve years later he was released, and he moved to Moscow where he spent the remainder of his life writing translations and poetry.

Paz, Juan Carlos (1897–1972)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Violeta Nigro-Giunta
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Chamber Music ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
Film Scores ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Press ◽  
Traditional Institutions

Juan Carlos Paz (1897–1972) was an Argentine composer, critic, writer, and self-described "compositional guide" who played a key role in twentieth-century Argentine contemporary music. Known for his rebellious attitude towards traditional institutions and academia, and as an advocate of avant-garde music throughout his life, Paz was a pioneer in the use of the twelve-tone technique in Latin America. Paz founded such groups as Grupo Renovación [Renovation Group] and Asociación Nueva Música [New Music Association], both devoted to promoting and performing new music. Paz wrote music for solo instruments, chamber music, orchestra, and theatre, as well as film scores. He published three important books dedicated to new music and three volumes containing his memoirs, and collaborated intensively with the press and magazines (Crítica, Reconquista, Acción de Arte, La Protesta, La Campana de Palo, Argentina Libre, among others).

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Jennifer Iverson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
Reliable Marker ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Up

The Westdeutscher Rundfunk [West German Radio] or WDR studio emerged in the early 1950s in Cologne, West Germany in a conflicted Cold War climate. On the one hand, electronic music signified social and artistic progress; avant-garde music stood as a reliable marker of democracy and freedom in contrast to Nazi and Soviet aesthetic mandates. On the other hand, technophobic audiences and critics reacted with skepticism to de-personalized, machine-mediated concerts, often regarding the new sounds with disdain. Nevertheless, cultural administrators, especially by means of the regional radio network, channeled funding to new music and the electronic studio as a way of rebuilding West Germany’s cultural hegemony. The WDR studio’s heterogeneity—its ability to incorporate and make use of several different types of resources—became a key to its success. The studio’s composers and technicians synthesized new sounds from scientific discourses. They reclaimed military technologies and long-standing musical lineages, opening up a new frontier. By embracing electronic music, West Germany found a way out of its decimated postwar landscape and emerged as a leader in the cultural Cold War.

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