The Sitwells and Sitwellism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Longworth
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Literary Modernism ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aesthetic Standard ◽  
Post War

Few figures have been so renowned and yet so critically dismissed within the history of literary modernism as Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. For a time in the early 1920s they were the leading personalities of London’s immediately post-war modernist haut bohemia, and the embodiment of the modernist avant-garde as it was perceived in the popular imagination. One of the reasons for their disappearance from histories of the emergence of English modernism, is perhaps that the Sitwellian brand of avant-gardism was so distinct from the classicist aesthetic standard by which modernism would subsequently come to be defined. This chapter examines a cult of “ornamental modernism” in the 1920s, of which the Sitwells were the figureheads; an impulse that we find in works that embrace the extravagant, the theatrical, or the eccentric; that turn to the decadent, baroque, and rococo rather than the classical for their models, that foreground artistic celebrity rather than impersonality, and in which performance and façades dominate rather than formalist clean lines or the direct articulation of subjective consciousness. It is an alternative trend in experimental art that overtly positions itself in antagonism with the conservative artistic and cultural tendencies of the period, but that also sits awkwardly in relation to the standard and revisionary histories of avant-garde and modernist experiment, exemplifying instead an ornamental aesthetic that has been all but obliterated from subsequent literary and art history.

scholarly journals MARIAN MINICH (1898‒1965)

Muzealnictwo ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 163-174
Author(s):  
Paulina Kurc-Maj
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Museum ◽  
Professional Experience ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The University

Marian Minich was born on the 21st December 1898 in Baligród near Lesko, died on the 6th of July 1965 in Łódź. For thirty years, excluding the World War II period, he was a director of the Art Museum in Łódź. In 1929, he graduated from the John Casimir University in Lviv, history of art faculty. He worked there from 1928, first as an assistant of Professor Władysław Kozicki, then of Professor Władysław Podlacha. In 1932, he defended his doctoral thesis on the oeuvre of Andrzej Grabowski (published in 1957). He was granted a university award while still a student for his study The Concept of Art by Wölfflin, whose methodology influenced future exhibition concepts of Marian Minich. From the late 1920s, he was writing as an art critic for Lviv newspapers. In 1935, he assumed the position of the director of the Art Museum in Łódź (at the time: the J. and K. Bartoszewicz Museum of History and Art). Among his major achievements was not only a remarkable expansion of museum collection, but also a transformation of the museum into an institution devoted exclusively to art, with a significant representation of contemporary art. In the uneasy post-war years, he managed to sustain this direction, both before and after the tightening of cultural policies in the socialist realism era. In 1948, together with the first post-war permanent exhibition, the Art Museum in Łódź opened thanks to him the “Neoplastic Room” by Władysław Strzemiński. Marian Minich was also a persistent defender of the avant-garde, and strived to make it an integral part of conceptual programme for any art museum. From the years 1946/1947 to 1951/1952, he taught art history at the University of Łódź. His professional experience as a museum director has been described by him in a book Szalona galeria (published in 1963); his article O nową organizację muzeów sztuki (1966) he devoted to museum issues.

S. YAKOVENKO AND HIS SKILLS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE INTERPETATION OF Y. BOUTSKO’S MONO-OPERA "DIARY OF A MADMAN"

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-145
Author(s):  
O. A. Podguzova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Xxth Century ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Great Demand ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Vocal Art

Sergey Borisovich Yakovenko is the People's Artist of Russia, a famous musician, vocal teacher and Doctor of Art History. He entered a bright page in the history of Russian vocal art of the XXth century. Starting from the 1950s, as a vocalist, he was in great demand for chamber vocal performances, with some of them being composed by modern musicians. Yakovenko was able to operate freely with a whole stock of expressive means, inherent for avant-garde music, allowing him to take part in the most difficult performances of the latest vocal and vocal-instrumental compositions, which manifested his inclination to the theater, to the disclosure of the dramaturgy of works. S. B. Yakovenko’s stage talent declared itself in its fullness during the performance of mono- operas, among them "Diary of a Madman" by Yuriy Butsko (1968), which received a great resonance in the theatrical life of Russia. The general content of this article is the analysis of S. B. Yakovenko’s performing skill, which gave birth to a wide range of character images, generated by the protagonist’s imagination. After the analysis of audio and video recordings of the vocalist’s performances, as well as his numerous scientific works and conversations, the author discovers several important features typical for the performing interpretation by S. B. Yakovenko. These are his vocal-dramaturgical principles and vocal-theatrical direction. In Y. Boutsko’s opera "Diary of a Madman" the unique performance palette of S. B. Yakovenko allows the singer to create eight various, rapidly interchanging images, using exclusively the resources of his voice, while being on an empty stage without props and with little or no gesture or mime.

Howe, Irving (1920–1993)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saul Noam Zaritt
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Modernism ◽  
Yiddish Literature ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Social Critic ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Cultural Innovation ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Irving Howe ◽  
Post War

Irving Howe was an American literary and social critic. Howe was a central figure in the circles of American democratic socialism as well as a prominent voice in post-war American literary criticism. Though he addressed a great number of literary topics and periods in his writing, Howe wrote important reflections on international literary modernism—in what Howe perceived as its last stages. Howe helped facilitate the rise of modernism in the cultural mainstream during the post-war period while remaining critical of the ways in which contemporary ideologies could appropriate the strategies of the literary avant-garde for exploitative and destructive purposes. Howe was particularly active in promoting modern Yiddish literature, initiating the translation and circulation of Yiddish writers who had previously been unknown to English-speaking audiences. Seeking to conserve a disappearing culture, Howe viewed Yiddish modernism as a compelling expression of the tension in modernity between tradition and cultural innovation.

scholarly journals Understanding with Water: Hydro-art in Osieki (1973)

2021 ◽  
pp. 356-374
Author(s):  
Karolina Majewska-Güde
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Land Art ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Water Surfaces ◽  
History Of ◽  
Feminist New Materialisms

The paper is located at the intersection of the art history of the Polish neo-avant-garde and the environmental humanities informed by feminist new materialisms. It proposes an interpretation of performative works in which artists used aqueous matter as an object of interaction, a source of artistic transcription, and as an active participant in artistic scenarios. It concentrates on works that were realized during the open-air art meetings in socialist Poland and in particular at the Osieki meeting in 1973 with the title The Art of Water Surfaces [Plastyka obszarów wodnych]. Based on the analyzed works, it offers a speculative reflection on Hydroart, which is defined as region-specific development parallel to land art practices.

“The War Brought Us Close and the Peace Will Not Divide Us”: Exhibitions of Art from Czechoslovakia in Warsaw in the Late 1940s

Ikonotheka ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
Petra Skarupsky
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Art Exhibition ◽  
Graphic Art ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Yield Information ◽  
Research Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

In his book Awangarda w cieniu Jałty (In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989), Piotr Piotrowski mentioned that Polish and Czechoslovakian artists were not working in mutual isolation and that they had opportunities to meet, for instance at the Arguments 1962 exhibition in Warsaw in 1962. The extent, nature and intensity of artistic contacts between Poland and Czechoslovakia during their coexistence within the Eastern bloc still remain valid research problems. The archives of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Zachęta – National Gallery of Art which I have investigated yield information on thirty-fi ve exhibitions of art produced in Czechoslovakia that took place in Warsaw in the period of the People’s Republic of Poland. The current essay focuses on exhibitions organised in the late 1940s. The issue of offi cial cultural cooperation between Poland and Czechoslovakia was regulated as early as in the fi rst years after the war. Institutions intended to promote the culture of one country in the other one and associations for international cooperation were established soon after. As early as in 1946, the National Museum in Warsaw hosted an exhibition entitled Czechoslovakia 1939–1945. In 1947 the same museum showed Contemporary Czechoslovakian Graphic Art. A few months after “Victorious February”, i.e. the coup d’état carried out by the Communists in Czechoslovakia in early 1948, the Young Czechoslovakian Art exhibition opened at the Young Artists and Scientists’ Club, a Warsaw gallery supervised by Marian Bogusz. It showed the works of leading artists of the post-war avant-garde, and their authors were invited to the vernissage. Nine artists participated in both exhibitions, i.e. at the National Museum and at the Young Artists and Scientists’ Club. A critical analysis of art produced in one country of the Eastern bloc as exhibited in another country of that bloc enables an art historian to outline a section of the complex history of artistic life. Archival research yields new valuable materials that make it impossible to reduce the narration to a simple opposition contrasting the avant-garde with offi cial institutions.

scholarly journals List, który zaginął

2018 ◽  
pp. 273-278
Author(s):  
Andrzej Turowski
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of The University ◽  
The University ◽  
Anxiety And Fear

A Letter That Was Lost Summary The paper presents the history of a letter by Tadeusz Kantor of 1981 that was long lost. Kantor responds in it to a proposal from the Institute of Art History of the University of Poznań to have a series of lectures on the avant-garde. Writing that he had not time for it, he explains in some detail his detachment from the institutional study of the avant-garde at the university, stressing his involvement in the avant-garde activity through his art, in particular the Cricot theater. Kantor insists that the avant-garde does not belong to the public domain, but is a result of the artist’s private experience of anxiety and fear in confrontation with the audience and their emotional response to engaged art.

scholarly journals University Art History in Slovakia after WWII and its Sovietization in 1950s

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-190
Author(s):  
Katarina Kolbiarz Chmelinová
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
History Instruction ◽  
New Rhetoric ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The University

In post-WWII Slovakia, art history was available only as a university field of study at Bratislava University (in 1954 regaining its name Comenius University) at the Seminár pre dejiny umenia / Seminar of Art History, a separate part of the Faculty of Arts of the university, where art history had been taught as an independent discipline since 1923 before its conversion to a department. Post-war changes in state structures and the new political system radically affected Slovak society and the education system in the country. This article is the very first attempt to present in detail the extent and character of changes in university art history instruction in the part of the socialist era of the Czechoslovak Republic. It is based on the study and comparison of previously unprocessed sources from various university and state archives and their classification in the context of known historical facts. This contribution represents an in-depth probe into the post-war efforts to build a new university foundation and system of art history instruction in Slovakia within the Czechoslovak Republic, and its Sovietization as well. The text analyzes the university environment, the curriculum, the study program of art history and the relevant changes resulting from political pressure from 1945 to 1960. They were the consequence of two directly related, significant moments in the history of Slovakia: the establishment of the Third Czechoslovak Republic in 1945 and the communist coup in 1948, which was followed by the most totalitarian period in the history of the state. The article also discusses the personal changes in the art history staff forced by the political situation (J. Dubnický, V. Wagner, V. Mencl, A. Güntherová-Mayerová, R. Matuštík, T. Štrauss, K. Kahoun). After a brief presentation of the situation in Czechoslovakia at the time, the article first deals with the ad hoc activities and efforts of scientists seeking to maintain art history studies in Slovakia at the university level immediately after the end of the war. The central issue in the article is the changes in the way of teaching resulting from the political upheaval in February 1948. Against the background of political and social changes, the new law on higher education (Act No. 58/1950), which forces significant organizational transformations, is discussed. As part of the process of Sovietization of university education in Slovakia, the modified Seminar of Art History lost its independent status for a long time, and its staff was largely replaced. At the same time, throughout this period, there was a visible tendency to stabilize the teaching system and attempts to become independent again and to develop discipline, undertaken contrary to the imposed system. The 1950s, with their new rhetoric and propaganda optimism, appear to be a decade devoid of internal consistency. It started the most totalitarian period, which lasted until Stalin’s death in 1953, but was followed by a short thaw and then by a new wave of repression after 1957, which chose victims even at the beginning of the next decade. The article focuses on two sides of the 1950s – centralization and the dominant ideological control of the Communist Party, on one hand, and on the other, the obvious effort to unify and professionalize the teaching of the discipline. The factual material presented here shows the scale of changes interpreted in the context of the political and social changes of that time. The case study provides an analysis of system efforts made in the 1940s and 1950s to establish new principles of university teaching for the history of art in Slovakia as part of the Czechoslovak Republic. It aims to broaden the factual basis and existing overview of knowledge of art history in Slovakia and supplement existing studies on the history of art history in the country (J. Bakoš, I. Ciulisová, B. Koklesová).

scholarly journals Art Discourse of the Yekaterinburg Avant-Garde: From the 1960s Basements to the 1980s Exhibitions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galina Golynets
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Special Role ◽  
State University ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Age Range

This paper is devoted to the first domestic international conference Avant-Garde Movements in the Soviet Fine Arts: History and Modernity organised by the Department of the Art History of the Ural State University, by the Regional Department of Culture and by the White Gallery under the direction V.A. Malinov. The conference took place on January 19–21, 1990 in Sverdlovsk in the Cinema House. This event, which united art critics of the Urals, Siberia, Moscow, Kiev and Sofia, was one of the first sophisticated attempts to consider the issues faced by art movements which were not officially recognized and, therefore, existed “in the underground”. Due to various objective and subjective circumstances, local cultural strivings of that time were expressed more fully in painting and graphics than in other art forms. Sverdlovsk visual arts became well-known far beyond the region and played a special role in the city’s artistic life. The exhibition focused on the members of the art partnership ”Surikova, 31”. Almost two hundred artists and over six hundred works were presented in the 1987 exhibition. The exhibition stunned the public due to the age range of the artists, the explosion of movements and styles, and most of all the freedom of expression. Since then, exhibition activity has emerged from the basements and become public. Materials from the Ural conference 1990 are still interesting and relevant as part of the history of non-official art both in Sverdlovsk/Yekaterinburg and Russia in general. Keywords: modernism, avant-garde, Artists’ Union, socialist realism, underground, the second avant-garde, nonconformism, postmodernism.

H. C. Artmann and the Austrian Literary Renaissance

Tempo ◽  
1978 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Harriett Watts
Keyword(s):  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Important Member ◽  
Post War ◽  
Literary Renaissance

H. C. Artmann, multilingual poet, translator and Austrian Surrealist, was the most important member of the ‘Wiener Gruppe’. His range of style contributed significantly to a literary renaissance which has been in progress in Austria since 1950. Artmann's ‘Eight Point Proclamation of the Poetic Act’, published in 1953, was the first manifesto of an eclectic circle of Viennese poets and composers. Now known in the histories of literature as ‘die Wiener Gruppe’, this circle proved to be the vanguard of Austria's post-war avant-garde movement. Artmann was widely read, ten years older than the others and a bohemian ‘radical’ around whom the younger artists gathered. He represented the Surrealist and Romantic traditions, and was joined by Gerhard Rühm, a serialist composer who experimented with Constructivist procedures, such as the mathematical permutation of words, for the composition of poetry. During its most creative phase, 1952–58, the ‘Wiener Gruppe’ achieved a synthesis of the two divergent trends of post-war experimental art in Europe, Surrealism and Constructivism. Fluctuating between Artmann's Surrealist attitude and Rühm's Constructivist approach, the ‘Wiener Gruppe’ developed into the most diversified and innovative of the post-war experimental movements.

X: A Quarterly Review and McGahern’s modernism

John McGahern ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Walker
Keyword(s):  
Literary Modernism ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Quarterly Review ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter looks at the interconnected Dublin and London contexts to McGahern’s reception of literary and visual modernism. It does so primarily through the prism of the material and ideas circulating in the magazine X: A Quarterly Review and among the coterie (Patrick Swift, Anthony Cronin and others) involved in its production – with whom McGahern had considerable contact leading up to and following his first appearance in print in the magazine. This context is accessed through fresh archival research, including drawing on some previously un-discussed correspondence between the editors, and their patrons and contributors. This is also aligned to broader theoretical and historical perspectives on the relationship between the abstract and the actual within visual and literary modernism, as well as the post-war fate of modernism and the avant-garde.

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