The Politics of Art and Architecture at the Bauhaus, 1919–1933

Author(s):  
John V. Maciuika

This chapter presents a wide-ranging survey of the politics and aesthetics of developments in interwar German architecture, with special attention to the key institution of Weimar architectural modernism, the Bauhaus. Artists at Walter Gropius's experimental Bauhaus school and in such diverse avant-garde art movements as Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, and Constructivism reflected a broad consensus that the pre-war empire had proved an absolute failure. The Kaiser, the government, the aristocracy, the military, big business, and the bourgeoisie were all seen as complicit in a corrupt system unable to cope with the many challenges of industrial modernity. Like a shifting kaleidoscope, artistic production during the Weimar era dazzled with unexpected forms, ever-shifting conceptual variety, and ideological diversity.

ARTMargins ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-119
Author(s):  
Sofia Gotti

The introductory text foregrounds the article “From the Stamps to the Bubble” (1968) by Brazilian historian and curator Aracy A. Amaral. It seeks to locate the primary document within a broader historiography of Brazilian art in the second half of the 1960s, and examine the ways in which the military dictatorship, along with certain cultural exchanges facilitated by Brazil's economic development in this period affected artistic production. Placing particular attention on the multiple terminologies that were in use when the article was written, the introduction focuses on the contiguities of Pop Art in the Brazilian cultural milieu. It argues that Pop was present inasmuch as it inspired artists to initiate a process of radical experimentation, which empowered them to depart from an avant-garde tradition founded on geometric abstraction.


ARTMargins ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-125
Author(s):  
Aracy Amaral

The introductory text foregrounds the article “From the Stamps to the Bubble” (1968) by Brazilian historian and curator Aracy A. Amaral. It seeks to locate the primary document within a broader historiography of Brazilian art in the second half of the 1960s, and examine the ways in which the military dictatorship, along with certain cultural exchanges facilitated by Brazil's economic development in this period affected artistic production. Placing particular attention on the multiple terminologies that were in use when the article was written, the introduction focuses on the contiguities of Pop Art in the Brazilian cultural milieu. It argues that Pop was present inasmuch as it inspired artists to initiate a process of radical experimentation, which empowered them to depart from an avant-garde tradition founded on geometric abstraction.


Fascism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Griffin

This article sets out to contribute conceptual clarity to the growing recognition of the modern and futural dynamic behind fascist cultural projects by focusing on projects for architectural renewal under the Third Reich. It starts by reviewing the gradual recognition of the futural temporality of the regime’s culture. It then introduces the concept ‘rooted modernism’ and argues for its application not only to the vernacular idioms of some of the Reich’s new buildings, but also to the International Style and machine aesthetic deployed in many Nazi technological and industrial buildings. The article’s main focus is on the extensive use made in the new civic and public architecture under Nazism (and Fascism) of ‘stripped classicism’. This was a form of neo-classicism widely encountered in both democratic and authoritarian states throughout the inter-war period, and which can be understood as an alternative strand of architectural modernism co-existing with more overtly avant-garde experiments in reshaping the built environment. The case is then made for applying a new conceptual framework for evaluating the relationship to modernity and modernism of architectural projects, not just in fascist cultural production, but that of the many authoritarian right-wing regimes of the period which claimed to embrace the national past while striving for a dynamic, heroic future. This opens up the possibility for historians to engage with the complex cultural entanglements and histoires croisées of revolutionary with modernizing conservative states in the ‘fascist era’.


Author(s):  
George McKay

This chapter is a reconsideration of the contribution punk rock made to antinuclear and antiwar expression and campaigning in the 1980s in Britain. Much has been written about the avant-garde, underground, independent, DIY, and grass-roots (counter)cultural politics of punk and post-punk, but the argument here is that such scholarship has often been at the expense of considering the music’s hit and even chart-topping singles. The chapter has three aims: first, to trace the relations between punk and cultures of war and peace; second, to reframe punk’s protest within a mainstream pop music context via analysis of its antiwar hit singles in two key years, 1980 and 1984; third, more broadly, to further our understanding of (musical) cultures of peace. Punk was a pop phenomenon, but so was political punk: the vast majority of the many pop hit songs and headline acts with antiwar and antinuclear messages in the military dread years of the early 1980s were a lot, or a bit, punky. This chapter argues that a wider and at the time significantly higher-profile social resonance of punk has been overlooked in the subsequent critical narratives. In doing so it seeks to revise punk history, and retheorize punk’s social contribution as a remarkable music of truly popular protest.


CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-306
Author(s):  
Tamara Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz

Multisensory and cross-modal perception have been recognised as crucial for shaping modernist epistemology, aesthetics, and art. Illustrative examples of how it might be possible to test equivalences (or mutual translatability) between different sensual modalities can be found in theoretical pronouncements on the arts and in artistic production of both the avant-garde and high modernism. While encouraging multisensory, cross-modal, and multimodal artistic experiments, twentieth-century artists set forth a new language of sensory integration. This article addresses the problem of the literary representation of multisensory and cross-modal experience as a particular challenge for translation, which is not only a linguistic and cross-cultural operation but also cross-sensual, involving the gap between different culture-specific perceptual realities. The problem of sensory perception remains a vast underexplored terrain of modernist translation history and theory, and yet it is one with potentially far-reaching ramifications for both a cultural anthropology of translation and modernism's sensory anthropology. The framework of this study is informed by Douglas Robinson's somatics of translation and Clive Scott's perceptive phenomenology of translation, which help to put forth the notion of sensory equivalence as a pragmatic correspondence between the source and target texts, appealing to a range of somato-sensory (audial, visual, haptic, gestural, articulatory kinaesthetic, proprioceptive) modalities of reader response.


Author(s):  
Necati Polat

This book explores the transformation of Turkey’s political regime from 2002 under the AKP rule. Turkey has been through a series of major political shifts historically, roughly from the mid-19th century. The book details the most recent change, locating it in its broader historical setting. Beginning with the AKP rule from late 2002, supported by a wide informal coalition that included liberals, it describes how the ‘former’ Islamists gradually acquired full power between 2007 and 2011. It then chronicles the subsequent phase, looking at politics and rights under the amorphous new order. This highly accessible assessment of the change in question places it in the larger context of political modernisation in the country over the past 150 or so years, covering all of the main issues in contemporary Turkish politics: the religious and secular divide, the Kurds, the military, foreign policy orientation, the state of human rights, the effective concentration of powers in the government and a rule by policy, rather than law, initiated by Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian populism. The discussion at once situates Turkey in the broader milieu of the Arab Spring, especially in terms of Islamist politics and Muslim piety in the public sphere, with some emphasis on ‘Islamo-nationalism’ (Millî Görüş) as a local Islamist variety. Effortlessly blending history, politics, law, social theory and philosophy in making sense of the change, the book uses the concept of mimesis to show that continuity is a key element in Turkish politics, despite the series of radical breaks that have occurred.


1967 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-420
Author(s):  
Arthur MacEwan

These books are numbers 4 and 5, respectively, in the series "Studies in the Economic Development of India". The two books are interesting complements to one another, both being concerned with the analysis of projects within national plan formulation. However, they treat different sorts of problems and do so on very different levels. Marglin's Public Investment Criteria is a short treatise on the problems of cost-benefit analysis in an Indian type economy, i.e., a mixed economy in which the government accepts a large planning responsibility. The book, which is wholely theoretical, explains the many criteria needed for evaluation of projects. The work is aimed at beginning students and government officials with some training in economics. It is a clear and interesting "introduction to the special branch of economics that concerns itself with systematic analysis of investment alternatives from the point of view of a government".


2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-175
Author(s):  
Jos Monballyu

Over de motieven waarom Belgische militairen tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog naar de Duitse vijand deserteerden is al veel geschreven. Volgens de Franstalige patriottische pers en literatuur van kort na de Eerste Wereldoorlog was die desertie uitsluitend te wijten aan de defaitistische ingesteldheid van de Vlaamse Frontbeweging en de talrijke aansporingen waarmee hun vier afgezanten naar de Duitsers (Jules Charpentier, Karel De Schaepdrijver, Vital Haesaert en Carlos Van Sante) de Vlaamse soldaten aan het IJzerfront bestookten. De Vlaamse historici probeerden die beschuldiging op allerlei manieren te weerleggen of schoven de verantwoordelijkheid voor die desertie in de schoenen van Antoon Pira en zijn Algemeen Vlaamsch Democratische Verbond. Geen enkele historicus ging daarbij na wat de deserteurs zelf over hun desertie naar de vijand te vertellen hadden. Dit deden zij nochtans uitvoerig tijdens de verschillende gerechtelijke ondervragingen waaraan zij na de oorlog werden onderworpen wanneer zij konden worden aangehouden. Het feit dat zij daarbij al strafbaar waren van zodra zij wetens en willens deserteerden ongeacht hun eigenlijke motief, liet hen daarbij toe om dit motief vrij complexloos mee te delen. Geen enkele van de overlopers van wie het strafdossier bewaard is, gaf echter toe dat hij omwille van de Vlaamse kwestie was overgelopen. Oorlogsmoeheid en de behoefte om zijn familieleden terug te zien waren, zoals in alle legers, de voornaamste motieven waarom zij naar de vijand deserteerden. Ook de Belgische Militaire Veiligheid en de krijgsauditeurs slaagden er trouwens niet in om een verband te leggen tussen de Vlaamse Frontbeweging en de Belgische deserties naar de vijand.________Desertion to the enemy in the Belgian front army during the First World War (part 2)Much has already been written about the reasons why Belgian soldiers deserted to the German enemy during the First World War. According to the French language patriotic press and literature dating from shortly after the First World War that desertion was exclusively due to the defeatist attitude of the Flemish Front Movement and the many exhortations with which their four representatives to the Germans (Jules Charpentier, Karel De Schaepdrijver, Vital Haesaert and Carlos Van Sante) bombarded the Flemish soldiers at the Yser Front. Flemish historians attempted in a variety of ways to refute that accusation or they shifted the responsibility for the desertion on to Antoon Pira and his Algemeen Vlaamsch Democratische Verbond (General Flemish Democratic Union). Not a single historian investigated what the deserters themselves had to say about their desertion to the enemy. However, the deserters gave extensive explanations during the detailed investigation that took place during the various judicial interrogations, to which they were submitted after the war if it was possible to arrest them. The fact that they were considered to have committed a criminal offence for having knowingly deserted whatever their actual motive, allowed them to communicate this motive without too many complexes. However, none of the defectors whose criminal records have been preserved admitted that he had defected for the sake of the Flemish Question.  As is the case in all armies, the main reasons for desertion to the enemy were war-weariness and the longing to see members of their family. The Belgian Military Security and the military auditors were not able either to establish a causal link between the Flemish Front Movement and the Belgian desertions to the enemy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Lisa Grace S. Bersales ◽  
Josefina V. Almeda ◽  
Sabrina O. Romasoc ◽  
Marie Nadeen R. Martinez ◽  
Dannela Jann B. Galias

With the advancement of technology, digitalization, and the internet of things, large amounts of complex data are being produced daily. This vast quantity of various data produced at high speed is referred to as Big Data. The utilization of Big Data is being implemented with success in the private sector, yet the public sector seems to be falling behind despite the many potentials Big Data has already presented. In this regard, this paper explores ways in which the government can recognize the use of Big Data for official statistics. It begins by gathering and presenting Big Data-related initiatives and projects across the globe for various types and sources of Big Data implemented. Further, this paper discusses the opportunities, challenges, and risks associated with using Big Data, particularly in official statistics. This paper also aims to assess the current utilization of Big Data in the country through focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Based on desk review, discussions, and interviews, the paper then concludes with a proposed framework that provides ways in which Big Data may be utilized by the government to augment official statistics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Parola

This essay derives from the primary need to make order between direct and indirect sources available for the reconstruction of the history of video art in Italy in the seventies. In fact, during the researches for the Ph.D. thesis it became clear that in most cases it is difficult to define, in terms of facts, which of the different historiographies should be taken into consideration to deepen the study of video art in Italy. Beyond legitimate differences of perspectives and methods, historiographical narratives all share similar issues and narrative structure. The first intention of the essay is, therefore, to compare the different historiographic narratives on Italian video art of the seventies, verifying their genealogy, the sources used and the accuracy of the narrated facts. For the selection of the corpus, it was decided to analyze in particular monographic volumes dealing with the history of the origins of video art in Italy. The aim was, in fact, to get a wide range of types of "narrations", as in the case of contemporary art and architecture magazines, which are examined in the second part of the essay. After the selection, for an analytical and comparative study of the various historiography, the essay focuses only on the Terza Biennale Internazionale della Giovane Pittura. Gennaio ’70. Comportamenti, oggetti e mediazioni (Third International Biennial of Young Painting. January '70. Behaviors, Objects and Mediations, 1970, Bologna), the exhibition which - after Lucio Fontana's pioneering experiments - is said to be the first sign of the arrival of videotape in Italy (called at the time videorecording), curated by Renato Barilli, Tommaso Trini, Andrea Emiliani and Maurizio Calvesi. The narration given so far of this exhibition appeared more mythological than historical and could be compared structurally to that of the many numerous beginnings that historiographyies on international video art identify as ‘first’ and ‘generative’. In the first part of the essay the 'facts' related to Gennaio ’70, as narrated by historiography on video art, are compared. In the second part the survey is carried out through some of the direct sources identified during the research, with the aim of answering to questions raised by the comparison between historiographies. Concluding, it is important to underline that the tapes containing the videos transmitted have not been found and seem to have disappeared since the ending of the exhibition. Nevertheless, the deepening of the works and documentation transmitted during the exhibition is possible thanks to other types of sources which give us many valuable information regarding video techniques and practices at the beginning of 1970 in Italy.


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