scholarly journals Modernità MinoicaL'Arte Egea e l'Art Nouveau: il Caso di Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo

Author(s):  
Ilaria Caloi

The sensational discovery in the early twentieth century of the prehistoric civilisation of Crete, named Minoan after the mythical king Minos, and the contemporary birth of Modern Art in Europe has led many scholars to discern analogies between Minoan art and Art Nouveau. This work analyses the entity and significance of Minoan art in the textile productions that made the name of the artist Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo. The famous "Knossos shawls", created by Fortuny from 1906 on in his Venetian studio in Palazzo Pesaro Orfei, which has now become the Fortuny museum, feature decorative motifs taken from the decorations visible on vases and frescoes in the famous Minoan centres of Crete, such as Knossòs and Festòs, dating to the second millennium BC. Understanding his way of representing the past and the exotic – in particular the Minoan civilisation of Crete – and bringing it back to life, allows us to penetrate the expectations and the demands of European society between the 19th and the 20th centuries. The reference to a culture such as the Minoan, which precisely at the beginning of the 20th century was dubbed by the academic world as a "modern" civilisation and defined as quintessentially the first "European" civilisation, contributed to render the Knossos shawls inspired by it the very height of fashion.

Author(s):  
Rachel Crossland

Chapter 1 explores Woolf’s writings up to the end of 1925 in relation to scientific ideas on wave-particle duality, providing the ‘retrospect of Woolf’s earlier novels’ which Michael Whitworth has suggested shows that she was working ‘in anticipation of the physicists’. The chapter as a whole challenges this idea of anticipation, showing that Woolf was actually working in parallel with physicists, philosophers, and artists in the early twentieth century, all of whom were starting to question dualistic models and instead beginning to develop complementary ones. A retrospect on wave-particle duality is also provided, making reference to Max Planck’s work on quanta and Albert Einstein’s development of light quanta. This chapter pays close attention to Woolf’s writing of light and her use of conjunctions, suggesting that Woolf was increasingly looking to write ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’. Among other texts, it considers Night and Day, Mrs Dalloway, and ‘Sketch of the Past’.


Modern Italy ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Andrea Bonfanti

This essay demonstrates that it is impossible to appreciate the actions of the Italian communist Emilio Sereni without considering his Zionist background. Anyone who is interested in understanding the complexities of communism in the past century and to avoid simplistic conclusions about this ideology will benefit from the study. The problem at stake is that researchers often approach communism in a monolithic manner, which does not adequately explain the multiform manifestations (practical and theoretical) of that phenomenon. This ought to change and to this extent this essay hopes to contribute to that recent strand of historical research that challenges simplistic views on communism. More specifically, by analysing the Management Councils that Sereni created in postwar Italy, we can see that many of their features in fact derived from, or found their deepest origins in, his previous experience as a committed socialist Zionist. The study, then, also relates Sereni to and looks at the broader experiences of early twentieth-century Zionism and Italian communism in the early postwar years.


2015 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 302-321
Author(s):  
Marion Bowman

This essay focuses upon a significant place, Glastonbury, at an important time during the early twentieth century, in order to shed light on a particular aspect of Christianity which is frequently overlooked: its internal plurality. This is not simply denominational diversity, but the considerable heterogeneity which exists at both institutional and individual level within denominations, and which often escapes articulation, awareness or comment. This is significant because failure to apprehend a more detailed, granular picture of religion can lead to an incomplete view of events in the past and, by extension, a partial understanding of later phenomena. This essay argues that by using the concept of vernacular religion a more nuanced picture of religion as it is – or has been – lived can be achieved.


2021 ◽  
Vol 201 (3) ◽  
pp. 534-545
Author(s):  
Janusz Zuziak

Lviv occupies a special place in the history of Poland. With its heroic history, it has earned the exceptionally honorable name of a city that has always been faithful to the homeland. SEMPER FIDELIS – always faithful. Marshal Józef Piłsudski sealed that title while decorating the city with the Order of Virtuti Militari in 1920. The past of Lviv, the always smoldering and uncompromising Polish revolutionist spirit, the climate, and the atmosphere that prevailed in it created the right conditions for making it the center of thought and independence movement in the early 20th century. In the early twentieth century, Polish independence organizations of various political orientations were established, from the ranks of which came legions of prominent Polish politicians and military and social activists.


Author(s):  
Maya Bielinski

The art manifesto, a written political, social, and artistic proclamation of an artistic movement, surged in popularity among avant‐garde art groups in the first half of the twentieth century. Many of the manifestos featured declarations for the synthesis of art and life as well as a call for social and political power for artists of both 'high' and 'low' art forms. Concurrently, new artistic interpretations of the humble teapot became suddenly ubiquitous. This inquiry explores how the teapot emerged as a dominant symbol for the goals of Modern Art movements, and includes an analysis of the teapot's socio‐political history, its ambiguous status between high and low art, and its role in the commercial sphere. By examining the teapots of Suprematism's Kazimir Malevich, Constructivism's Mariane Brandt,and Surrealism's Meret Oppenheim, this presentation will track ideas of functionality, the teapot as symbol, and aesthetics from 1923 to 1936. This small window in time offers an analysis of the extraordinary developments in teapots, and perhaps a glimpse of the paralleled momentum that occurred more generally in design, architecture, and the other arts in this time period.


Author(s):  
Bernard Vere

The Introduction looks at the rise of sport as an organised activity across Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It sets this in the context of the development of urban modernity, with elite sport becoming a focus for the emergent mass media and a concomitant rise in spectatorship. Sport can claim to be the most pervasive cultural form of the early twentieth century. As such it is surprising that the influence it had on modern art and artists has been largely overlooked.


Author(s):  
Anne O'Connor

In the early twentieth century, Palaeolithic research seemed to be flourishing on the Continent. Commont was carrying out groundbreaking work in the Somme, and rich hauls were being recovered from the reindeer-caves of France and Spain. France could also boast a research centre: the Institute of Human Palaeontology, where Boule, Breuil, and Obermaier held posts. Britain, though, was weighed down by nostalgia: unfavourable contrasts were being drawn between current research and the glorious decades of the past when Evans and Prestwich had brought such renown to British investigations. This apparent loss of impetus was noted abroad. Boule considered the British to have sunk into insularity after 1875, never to regain their early brilliance; in 1912, Breuil remarked at a luncheon party in Cambridge that no one in England knew anything about prehistory. The British Museum’s Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age, published in 1911 at the height of Commont’s work, declared: ‘the French system has now been revised in the light of recent discoveries, and is the basis of all Continental classifications’. It was regretted that the English river drifts had still not received any systematic excavations, and that the implements in these sediments still lay in confusion. This Guide was produced by Reginald Smith of the British Museum under the direction of Charles Hercules Read (1857–1929). In 1912, the same year that Breuil made his disparaging comment, Read arranged for Smith to excavate in one of the most productive Palaeolithic localities of the Thames Valley: Swanscombe village. Smith was assisted by Henry Dewey (1876–1965) of the Geological Survey, but the negotiations that gained Dewey’s help would also reveal differences of opinion between their two respective institutions about the value of Palaeolithic research. The connections drawn by Smith to the Continental sequence after working at Swanscombe would lift the gloom about British backwardness. These connections would also help draw the Palaeolithic and geological sequences closer together.


Author(s):  
Johnjoe McFadden ◽  
Jim Al-Khalili

Quantum biology is usually considered to be a new discipline, arising from recent research that suggests that biological phenomena such as photosynthesis, enzyme catalysis, avian navigation or olfaction may not only operate within the bounds of classical physics but also make use of a number of the non-trivial features of quantum mechanics, such as coherence, tunnelling and, perhaps, entanglement. However, although the most significant findings have emerged in the past two decades, the roots of quantum biology go much deeper—to the quantum pioneers of the early twentieth century. We will argue that some of the insights provided by these pioneering physicists remain relevant to our understanding of quantum biology today.


2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-241
Author(s):  
John Howlett

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the life and work of a forgotten progressive educator – (Henry) Caldwell Cook who was an English and drama teacher at the Perse School in Cambridge, UK. By looking at his key work The Play Way (1917) as well as the small number of his other writings it further seeks to explain the distinctiveness of his thinking in comparison to his contemporaries with a particular focus upon educational democracy. Design/methodology/approach The work was constructed primarily through a reading of Cook’s published output but also archival study, specifically by examining the archives held within the Perse School itself. These consisted of rare copies of Cook’s written works – unused by previous scholars – and materials relating to Cook’s work in the school such as his theatre designs and a full collection of contemporary newspaper reviews. Findings The paper contends that Cook’s understanding of democracy and democratic education was different to that of other early twentieth century progressives such as Edmond Holmes and Harriet Finlay-Johnson. By so doing it links him to the ideas of progressivism emergent in America from John Dewey et al. who were more concerned with democratic ways of thinking. It therefore not only serves to resurrect Cook as a figure of importance but also offers new insights into early twentieth century progressivism. Originality/value The value of the paper is that it expands what little previous writing there has been on Cook as well as using unused materials. It also seeks to use a biographical approach to start to better delineate progressive educators of the past thereby moving away from seeing them as a homogenous grouping.


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