The Einstein-Picasso Question

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-333
Author(s):  
Lewis Pyenson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
First World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
World War ◽  
Intellectual Work ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
The One ◽  
First World

The theories of relativity in physics and the style known as Cubism in painting found a favorable reception by theoretical physicists, on the one hand, and avant-garde art dealers and patrons, on the other hand, across the seven years before the First World War. The climate in bourgeois Europe contributing to this rapid assimilation of revolutionary, intellectual work is examined from the point of view of material culture. Emphasis is placed on Neo-Idealist abstraction in urban decoration and design, with a focus on Oriental carpets, wallpaper, and electrical lighting. Elements from all three domains are found in Cubism, and relativity assimilated both vocabulary and images from newly electrified cities.

Bodily/material culture and the fighter’s subjectivity

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Warnier
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
First World War ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The One ◽  
Experienced Fighter ◽  
First World

In this article, the author contends that the practice of warfare involves fighters’ subjectivity, which can be partly accessed by investigating fighters’ bodily/material culture. If this is the case, one would expect there to be a subjectivity gap between the social scientist, on the one hand, and the experienced fighter, on the other. This problem is discussed with regard to a Cameroon kingdom of the early 20th century and a fighter in the First World War (as analysed by the historians Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker), which enables the author to make significant comparisons.

Kroniek van een aangekondigd ontslag. Twee opmerkelijke brieven van Alfons Van de Perre betreffende zijn afscheid als volksvertegenwoordiger in 1919

2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
First World War ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Will ◽  
The One ◽  
First World ◽  
Member Of Parliament

In deze bronnenpublicatie ontleedt Luc Vandeweyer de parlementaire loopbaan van de geneesheer-politicus Alfons Van de Perre: hoe hij in 1912 feitelijk  tegen wil en dank  volksvertegenwoordiger werd, zich anderzijds blijkbaar naar behoren kweet van zijn taak en tijdens de eerste verkiezingen na de Eerste Wereldoorlog (1919) zijn mandaat hernieuwd zag maar meteen daarop ontslag nam. Volgens de bekende historiografische lezing was de abdicatie van de progressieve politicus een daad van zelfverloochening die enerzijds werd ingegeven door gezondheidsmotieven en  anderzijds was geïnspireerd door de wil om de eenheid binnen de katholieke partij te herstellen. De auteur komt op basis van nieuw en onontgonnen bronnenmateriaal tot de vaststelling dat Van de Perres spontane beslissing tot ontslag in de eerste plaats een strategische keuze was: in het parlement, waar hij zich overigens niet erg in zijn schik voelde, kon hij minder invloed uitoefenen op de Vlaamse beweging dan via de talrijke engagementen waarvoor hij voortaan de handen vrij had. Eén ervan was die van bestuurder én publicist bij het dagblad De Standaard.________Chronicle of the announcement of a resignation. Two remaekable letters by Alfons Van de Perre concerning his resignation as a Member of Parliament in 1919In this source publication Luc Vandeweyer analyses the parliamentary career of the physician-politician Alfons Van de Perre and he describes how Van de Perre became a Member of Parliament in 1912 actually against the grain, yet how he apparently did a good job carrying out his duties. During the first elections after the First World War (1919) Van de Perre found that his mandate was renewed, but he handed in his resignation immediately afterwards. According to the familiar historiographical interpretation the abdication of the progressive politician was an act of self-denial, which was prompted on the one hand by health reasons and on the other hand inspired by the will to restore unity within the Catholic political party. On the basis of new and so far unexplored source material the author concludes that the spontaneous decision by Van de Perres to hand in his resignation was above all a strategic choice: in the Parliament, which he did not much enjoy anyway, he could exert less influence on the Flemish movement than via his numerous commitments, which he was now free to take on. One of these was the post of director as well as political commentator of the newspaper De Standaard.

The Making of the Experimental Subject: Apparatus, Automatism, and the Anxiety of the Early Avant-Garde

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Branden Hookway
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
First World War ◽  
Experimental Subject ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Sensory Thresholds ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Testing And Measurement ◽  
First World

This essay presents the experimental subject as a figure of modernity. It addresses notions of control, sensory thresholds, automatism, and human agency through a study of experimental psychology and psychological apparatus from the late 19th century to the First World War, juxtaposing this with notions of experimentation in early 20th-century avant-garde movements. The human subject of experimental psychology, defined by its inexpression as it awaits the stimuli of testing and measurement, is treated as a prototype for the present-day user of technological interfaces.

‘When a Dream Vanishes’: Edward Gordon Craig in Florence

1989 ◽  
Vol 5 (18) ◽  
pp. 140-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Sardelli
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Influential Journal ◽  
First World

When Gordon Craig settled in Florence before the First World War, he found himself amidst a flourishing avant-garde artistic community. which he regarded with some caution. Between the staging of Rosmersholm with Duse in 1906 and the closing of his short-lived theatre school at the Goldoni Arena in 1914, he also conducted a correspondence with the eclectic cosmopolitan Carlo Placci – a previously unpublished source on which Alessandro Sardelli has drawn to illuminate Craig's Florentine years, during which his influential journal The Mask made its earliest appearance, and Craig also developed the idea of his adjustable screens, first employed during his Moscow collaboration with Stanislavski on Hamlet.

scholarly journals Pandemic Avant-Garde Urban Coexistence in Mário de Andrade’s Pauliceia Desvairada (1922) after the Spanish Flu

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Klengel
Keyword(s):  
Blind Spot ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Famous Book ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
First World

The radical aesthetic of the historical avant-garde movements has often been explained as a reaction to the catastrophic experience of the First World War and a denouncement of the bourgeoisie’s responsibility for its horrors. This article explores a blind spot in these familiar interpretations of the international avant-garde. Not only the violence of the World War but also the experience of a worldwide deadly pandemic, the Spanish flu, have moulded the literary and artistic production of the 1920s. In this paper, I explore this hypothesis through the example of Mário de Andrade’s famous book of poetry Pauliceia desvairada (1922), which I reinterpret in the light of historical studies on the Spanish flu in São Paulo. An in-depth examination of all parts of this important early opus of the Brazilian Modernism shows that Mário de Andrade’s poetic images of urban coexistence simultaneously aim at a radical renewal of language and at a melancholic coming to terms with a traumatic pandemic past.

The Belgian national past: Between commemoration and silence

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Rosoux ◽  
Laurence van Ypersele
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The One ◽  
Memory Conflicts ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

This article examines the gradual deconstruction of the Belgian national identity. Is it possible to speak of a de facto differentiation or even ‘federalization’ of the so-called ‘national past’ in Belgium? How do Belgians choose to remember and forget this past? To contribute to an understanding of these issues, the article considers two very different episodes of Belgian history, namely the First World War and the colonization of the Congo. On the one hand, the memory of the First World War appears to provide the template for memory conflicts in Belgium, and thus informs the memories of other tragedies such as the Second World War. On the other hand, the memory of the colonial past remains much more consensual – providing a more nuanced picture of competing views on the past. Beyond the differences between the ways in which these episodes are officially portrayed, the same fundamental trend may be observed: the gradual fragmentation of a supposedly smooth and reliable national version of history.

Curiosities from the Front

PMLA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
pp. 555-561
Author(s):  
Guillaume Apollinaire ◽  
Cedric Van Dijck
Keyword(s):  
Musical Instrument ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Guillaume Apollinaire ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Full Swing ◽  
First World

In November 1916, with the first world war in full swing, the Soldiers of the 82nd Territorial Infantry Regiment of the French Forces opened the latest issue of their monthly regimental magazine, Brise d'entonnoirs (“Breeze from Bombcraters”), to find a piece by the avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Entitled “Curiosités du front” (“Curiosities from the Front”), it reinvents the everyday objects that cluttered the front lines: a shovel held up above the trench, for instance, becomes a dancing musical instrument as German bullets strike the shovel plate. This sense of humor was characteristic of the trench press, which existed to distract readers from the grim realities of warfare. Probably because it was thought to be so amusing or pertinent, Apollinaire's piece attracted some notice in its day. Several of its sections—“The Shovel,” “Trellis,” “The Bulletproof Shield”—found their way into other publications, at the front as well as in Paris, and some even made it onto the popular quotation pages of the official magazine of the French army, Bulletin des Armées de la République, of which an unsuspecting Apollinaire had written a year earlier, “Les pages consacrées aux citations sont merveilleuses” (“The pages dedicated to quotations are marvelous” [Letter to André Level]).

The Development of Flight Deck Displays

1984 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-231
Author(s):  
F. S. Stringer
Keyword(s):  
Engine Speed ◽  
High Technology ◽  
First World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Flight Deck ◽  
First World

In this review of the evolution of displays and controls in military and civil fixed-wing aircraft, the author traces the development of flight instruments, largely in this country, from their rudimentary beginning before the first World War to the present high degree of automation and suggests certain pitfalls from the pilot's point of view in high-technology solutions.The Wright Brothers' aeroplane flew with only a stopwatch, a tachometer to measure engine speed, and an anemometer, all for measuring performance; the pilot had no instrumentation to help him fly the aircraft. There was little change up to the beginning of the first world war in 1914. The cockpit hardly existed as such: controls varied in design; some were levers, and often there was a wheel which, in the early days, controlled wing warping to change the lift of each wing to allow the aircraft to bank.

Applied Modernism

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 241-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul K. Saint-Amour
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Control ◽  
First World War ◽  
Aerial Photographs ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Continuous Survey ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Aerial Reconnaissance ◽  
Close Study ◽  
First World

This article is about a period of technology transfer – the late 1910s and 1920s – when wartime aerial reconnaissance techniques and operations were being adapted to a range of civilian uses, including urban planning, land use analysis, traffic control, tax equalization, and even archaeology. At the center of the discussion is the ‘photomosaic’: a patchwork of overlapping aerial photographs that have been rectified and fit together so as to form a continuous survey of a territory. Initially developed during the First World War to provide coverage of fronts, photomosaic mapping was widely practiced and celebrated during the postwar years as an aid to urban development. The article traces both the refinements in photomosaic technology after the Armistice and the rhetorical means by which the form’s avant-garde wartime reputation was domesticated into an ‘applied realism’ that often effaced its site-specific perspective, its elaborately rectified optics, and the oppositionality of both its military and civilian uses. The article has a broader theoretical aim as well. Classic statements of both structuralist and post-structuralist spatial theory (Barthes and de Certeau are the primary examples here) have produced an ossified geometry wherein the vertical is the axis of paradigm, top-down strategy, and manipulative distance and the horizontal the axis of syntagm, grassroots tactics, and resistant proximities and differences. In its close study of the technology and rhetoric surrounding interwar photogrammetry, the article provides an example of how one might reverse the long-standing misrecognition of high-altitude optics as effacing time, difference, and materiality – and what it might mean to view such optics as, instead, a resource in turning from abstract toward differential conceptions of both aerial photography and our theoretical habits. This turn I call ‘applied modernism’, a term that accesses both the wartime photomosaic’s affiliation with avant-garde painting and its insistence that portraits of the total are always projections from partial, specific vantages.

Out of sight, out of mind

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-502
Author(s):  
Sebastian Dohe ◽  
Malve Anna Falk
Keyword(s):  
German Law ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Lower Saxony ◽  
Research Project ◽  
The First World War ◽  
International Attention ◽  
Art Dealers ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

Abstract The grand-ducal gallery of Oldenburg is a forgotten collection today, though once it enjoyed international fame. In less than a century, the dukes of Oldenburg in Lower Saxony collected an exemplary gallery of Old Masters that attracted the attention and the praise of international connoisseurs and art historians like Wilhelm Bode, Abraham Bredius and Tancred Borenius. Then, after the end of the First World War, the collection fell apart. In 1919, it was disassembled and its masterpieces were sold, once again generating international attention, this time from art dealers, museums and collectors eager to have their share of the plunder. The protests over this sell-out added impetus to the passing of a Kulturgutschutzgesetz, the first German law aimed at the protection of works of art of national value. This article reviews the history of the gallery and presents the results of a recent research project.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document