Federating the Modern Spirit: The 1922 Congress of Paris

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Hentea

The aim of the ill-fated 1922 Congress of Paris, an international conference organized by André Breton, was to diagnose the sources of the “modern spirit.” Although the congress had ambitious international goals, it was brought down by a remark with xenophobic connotations. Largely remembered today as the death knell of Paris Dada—the public fight between Tristan Tzara and Breton meant not only that the congress never took place but also that Paris Dada was dissolved—the congress's failure stemmed from the tensions involved in selfconsciously deining modernism. Arguing that ambivalence over the concept shaped the main participants' understanding of the congress, I read the congress as a concrete manifestation of the impulse to federate the arts in post-World War I France.

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Katherine Isobel Baxter

The centenary of World War One was marked in the UK by an unprecedented national investment in the creative arts as a vehicle for remembrance. This scale of funding for commemorative arts, not least under a government whose mantra had been economic “austerity”, demonstrates the importance that the nation-state placed on remembrance and on engaging the public in acts of memory through the arts. In the aftermath of the centenary, funding bodies have commissioned evaluations of this programming. These evaluations have focused on audiences reached, organisations benefitted, and social transformation. What remain occluded by the reports are the experiences of the artists themselves and the curators with whom they worked. In this article I explore the personal and affective experiences of several artists and curators whose work contributed to this national programme of remembrance. I ask: to what extent did artists and curators consciously engage with prior artistic responses to World War One? How did the context of collective commemoration and memory-making inform their practice and the works produced? What did their involvement in this programme of national remembrance make them feel? What were the narratives of the war they wanted to tell? To begin to answer these questions, I draw on a series of one-to-one interviews conducted with a number of artists and curators who were involved in commemorative projects in the UK and overseas.


2021 ◽  
pp. 161189442199268
Author(s):  
Friederike Kind-Kovács

World War I and its aftermath produced a particularly vulnerable group of child victims: war orphans. This group included children whose fathers had fallen in battle, who had disappeared, or who had not (yet) returned home. Most of Europe’s war and postwar societies witnessed the massive presence of these child victims, and responded in various ways to rescue them and secure their future survival. This article offers an exploration of the ways in which the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and then later the post-imperial Hungarian state, became invested in providing care and relief to Hungarian war orphans. In contrast to other groups of child victims, whose parents were blamed for neglecting their parental duties, war orphans as the offspring of ‘war heroes’ profited from the public appreciation of their fathers’ sacrifice for the war effort and the Hungarian nation. The public discourse in the contemporary Hungarian media offers a glimpse into the emergence of a new public visibility of these child victims and of a new recognition of the societal obligation to care for them. Exploring World War I and its aftermath as a telling example of political transformation in the 20th century, the article showcases how war orphans were taken to personify essential notions of war- and postwar destruction, while also capturing visions of postwar recovery. It furthermore examines how welfare discourses and relief practices for Hungary’s war orphans were embedded in contemporary gender norms, notions of proper Christian morality and ethnic nationalism. On this basis, the article assesses the ways in which the case of Hungary’s war orphans not only mirrors the professionalization but also the fundamental transformation of child welfare in the aftermath of World War I.


2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. E5
Author(s):  
Prateeka Koul ◽  
Christine Mau ◽  
Victor M. Sabourin ◽  
Chirag D. Gandhi ◽  
Charles J. Prestigiacomo

World War I advanced the development of aviation from the concept of flight to the use of aircraft on the battlefield. Fighter planes advanced technologically as the war progressed. Fighter pilot aces Francesco Baracca and Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron) were two of the most famous pilots of this time period. These courageous fighter aces skillfully maneuvered their SPAD and Albatros planes, respectively, while battling enemies and scoring aerial victories that contributed to the course of the war. The media thrilled the public with their depictions of the heroic feats of fighter pilots such as Baracca and the Red Baron. Despite their aerial prowess, both pilots would eventually be shot down in combat. Although the accounts of their deaths are debated, it is undeniable that both were victims of traumatic head injury.


2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ofer Ashkenazi

Prison cells constituted a unique sphere in post-World War I German films. Unlike most of the modern city spheres, it was a realm in which the private and the public often merged, and in which reality and fantasy incessantly intertwined. This article analyses the ways in which filmmakers of the Weimar Republic envisaged the experience within the prison, focusing on its frequent association with fantasies and hallucinations. Through the analysis of often-neglected films from the period, I argue that this portrayal of the prison enabled Weimar filmmakers to engage in public criticism against the conservative, inefficient and prejudiced institutions of law and order in Germany. Since German laws forbade direct defamation of these institutions, filmmakers such as Joe May, Wilhelm Dietherle and Georg C. Klaren employed the symbolism of the prisoner’s fantasy to propagate the urgent need for thorough reform. Thus this article suggests that Weimar cinema, contrary to common notions, was not dominated by either escapism or extremist, anti-liberal worldviews. Instead, the prison films examined in this article are in fact structured as a warning against the decline of liberal bourgeois society in the German urban centres of the late 1920s.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-487
Author(s):  
John A. Askin ◽  
Kurt Glaser

IN SPITE of a short period of sovereignty— less than 7 years—the State of Israel is playing an important role in matters pertaining not only to the Middle East but, in some respects, in matters of importance to the whole world. In medicine the advances in Israel have been no less striking than the progress made in other fields. It is felt that the pediatricians of our country might be interested to learn about Israel's medical status, particularly pertaining to pediatrics. Palestine, of which the present Israel is a part, was in Old Testament times known as Canaan or Philistia because of the tribes which lived there. Palestine was the home of the Jewish people from the time Joshua conquered the land, about 1400 B.C., until the Romans destroyed the Jewish State in the year 70 A.D. Around 630 A.D. the country came under Moslem power. From 1516 to the end of World War I Palestine was a part of the Turkish Empire. In 1917, the British Government issued the famous Balfour Declaration which promised the Jews of the world that they could build a national homeland in Palestine. The League of Nations made the land a British mandate in 1920. From then until World War II Palestine was at several occasions plunged into violent civil war between the Jews and the Arabs. After World War II in 1947 Great Britain announced a decision to give up the Mandate.


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