The Forces of Form in German Modernism

The Forces of Form in German Modernism
Author: Malika Maskarinec
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2018-09-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0810137712

The Forces of Form in German Modernism charts a modern history of form as emergent from force. Offering a provocative alternative to the imagery of crisis and estrangement that has preoccupied scholarship on modernism, Malika Maskarinec shows that German modernism conceives of human bodies and aesthetic objects as shaped by a contest of conflicting and reciprocally intensifying forces: the force of gravity and a self-determining will to form. Maskarinec thereby discloses, for the first time, German modernism's sustained preoccupation with classical mechanics and with how human bodies and artworks resist gravity. Considering canonical artists such as Rodin and Klee, seminal authors such as Kafka and Döblin, and largely neglected thinkers in aesthetics and art history such as those associated with Empathy Aesthetics, Maskarinec unpacks the manifold anthropological and aesthetic concerns and historical lineage embedded in the idea of form as the precarious achievement of uprightness. The Forces of Form in German Modernism makes a decisive contribution to our understanding of modernism and to contemporary discussions about form, empathy, materiality, and human embodiment.

We Weren't Modern Enough

We Weren't Modern Enough
Author: Marsha Meskimmon
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1999-10-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780520221345

Meskimmon asks why women artists were left out of the canon of German modernism, tracing the reasons to the construction of a unified (male) history of art that in effect denied women a voice. The book is an effort to reconceive the period's art history and the perspective of the Weimar woman artist.

German Modernism

German Modernism
Author: Walter Frisch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2005-07-25
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0520420888

In this pioneering, erudite study of a pivotal era in the arts, Walter Frisch examines music and its relationship to early modernism in the Austro-German sphere. Seeking to explore the period on its own terms, Frisch questions the common assumption that works created from the later 1870s through World War I were transitional between late romanticism and high modernism. Drawing on a wide range of examples across different media, he establishes a cultural and intellectual context for late Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as their less familiar contemporaries Eugen d'Albert, Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger, Max von Schillings, and Franz Schreker. Frisch explores "ambivalent" modernism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as reflected in the attitudes of, and relationship between, Nietzsche and Wagner. He goes on to examine how naturalism, the first self-conscious movement of German modernism, intersected with musical values and practices of the day. He proposes convergences between music and the visual arts in the works of Brahms, Max Klinger, Schoenberg, and Kandinsky. Frisch also explains how, near the turn of the century, composers drew inspiration and techniques from music of the past—the Renaissance, Bach, Mozart, and Wagner. Finally, he demonstrates how irony became a key strategy in the novels and novellas of Thomas Mann, the symphonies of Mahler, and the operas of Strauss and Hofmannsthal.

German Modernism

German Modernism
Author: Walter Frisch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2005-07-25
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0520940806

In this pioneering, erudite study of a pivotal era in the arts, Walter Frisch examines music and its relationship to early modernism in the Austro-German sphere. Seeking to explore the period on its own terms, Frisch questions the common assumption that works created from the later 1870s through World War I were transitional between late romanticism and high modernism. Drawing on a wide range of examples across different media, he establishes a cultural and intellectual context for late Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as their less familiar contemporaries Eugen d'Albert, Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger, Max von Schillings, and Franz Schreker. Frisch explores "ambivalent" modernism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as reflected in the attitudes of, and relationship between, Nietzsche and Wagner. He goes on to examine how naturalism, the first self-conscious movement of German modernism, intersected with musical values and practices of the day. He proposes convergences between music and the visual arts in the works of Brahms, Max Klinger, Schoenberg, and Kandinsky. Frisch also explains how, near the turn of the century, composers drew inspiration and techniques from music of the past—the Renaissance, Bach, Mozart, and Wagner. Finally, he demonstrates how irony became a key strategy in the novels and novellas of Thomas Mann, the symphonies of Mahler, and the operas of Strauss and Hofmannsthal.

German Encounters with Modernism, 1840-1945

German Encounters with Modernism, 1840-1945
Author: Peter Paret
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2001-02-19
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780521790550

In German Encounters with Modernism, Peter Paret traces the reception of modern art, from the 1840s through the Nazi era, through the lens of social and political developments in Germany. Addressing broad cultural topics, such as the early history of Expressionism, the role of anti-Semitism in German reactions to modernism, and the impact of World War I on the arts, he also includes new interpretations of the work of artists such as the sculptor Ernst Barlach. Based on new archival discoveries, this study combines a strong narrative approach with interdisciplinary analysis.

High Modernism

High Modernism
Author: Joshua Kavaloski
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2014
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1571139109

A provocative new study that identifies a deep structure -- that of the political body -- in Frost''s poetry.

Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany

Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany
Author: Itohan Osayimwese
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2017-07-19
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0822982919

Over the course of the nineteenth century, drastic social and political changes, technological innovations, and exposure to non-Western cultures affected Germany's built environment in profound ways. The economic challenges of Germany's colonial project forced architects designing for the colonies to abandon a centuries-long, highly ornamental architectural style in favor of structural technologies and building materials that catered to the local contexts of its remote colonies, such as prefabricated systems. As German architects gathered information about the regions under their influence in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific—during expeditions, at international exhibitions, and from colonial entrepreneurs and officials—they published their findings in books and articles and organized lectures and exhibits that stimulated progressive architectural thinking and shaped the emerging modern language of architecture within Germany itself. Offering in-depth interpretations across the fields of architectural history and postcolonial studies, Itohan Osayimwese considers the effects of colonialism, travel, and globalization on the development of modern architecture in Germany from the 1850s until the 1930s. Since architectural developments in nineteenth-century Germany are typically understood as crucial to the evolution of architecture worldwide in the twentieth century, this book globalizes the history of modern architecture at its founding moment.

East German Modern

East German Modern
Author:
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 3791385356

This visually arresting tour through the former East Germany shows the best examples of modernist architecture still standing there today. The buildings constructed in East Germany after the Second World War are often dismissed as drab, Soviet-style, prefabricated blocks of cement. But the architecture of the German Democratic Republic was created with an eye toward modernity and efficiency, and heralded the birth of a new country and a new economic and social system. Hans Engels has traveled throughout East Germany to photograph iconic modernist buildings that survived demolition. From movie theaters, high-rises, and restaurants to museums, convention centers, and transit stations, these buildings have all stood the test of time. While the philosophy that drove their design may be outdated, their retro appeal is stronger than ever.

Ottoman Eurasia in Early Modern German Literature

Ottoman Eurasia in Early Modern German Literature
Author: Gerhild Scholz Williams
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0472128620

Even a casual perusal of seventeenth-century European print production makes clear that the Turk was on everyone’s mind. Europe’s confrontation of and interaction with the Ottoman Empire in the face of what appeared to be a relentless Ottoman expansion spurred news delivery and literary production in multiple genres, from novels and sermons to calendars and artistic representations. The trans-European conversation stimulated by these media, most importantly the regularly delivered news reports, not only kept the public informed but provided the basis for literary conversations among many seventeenth-century writers, three of whom form the center of this inquiry: Daniel Speer (1636-1707), Eberhard Werner Happel (1647-1690), and Erasmus Francisci (1626-1694). The expansion of the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries offers the opportunity to view these writers' texts in the context of Europe and from a more narrowly defined Ottoman Eurasian perspective. Ottoman Eurasia in Early Modern German Literature: Cultural Translations (Francisci, Happel, Speer) explores the variety of cultural and commercial conversations between Europe and Ottoman Eurasia as they negotiated their competing economic and hegemonic interests. Brought about by travel, trade, diplomacy, and wars, these conversations were, by definition, “cross-cultural” and diverse. They eroded the antagonism of “us and them,” the notion of the European center and the Ottoman periphery that has historically shaped the view of European-Ottoman interactions.

Erich Mendelsohn and the Architecture of German Modernism

Erich Mendelsohn and the Architecture of German Modernism
Author: Kathleen James
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 1997-07-13
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780521571685

Erich Mendelsohn's buildings, erected throughout Germany between 1920 and 1932, epitomized architectural modernity for his countrymen. In this study, Kathleen James examines his department stores, office buildings and cinemas, the downtown counterparts to the famous housing projects built during the same years in Frankfurt and Berlin. Demonstrating the degree to which their dynamic presence stemmed from Mendelsohn's attention to their consumer-oriented functions, James shows Mendelsohn to be more than an Expressionist, as he is usually characterized.