The Gesamtkunstwerk in Design and Architecture

The Gesamtkunstwerk in Design and Architecture
Author: Anders V. Munch
Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-04-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 8772194650

The history of modern design and architecture has seen many attempts to embrace and merge different art forms, and to bring art into the framing of everyday life and the organisation of modern society, in a process understood as total design or total architecture. These attempts were historically based on the romanticist idea of merging all art forms into a uniting and transgressing work of art, mostly associated with – but certainly not limited to – Richard Wagner’s theoretical writings and musical dramas. This utopian dream of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or Total Work of Art, was intended both to bring unity to the people and to bring art into the everyday life of their homes, as well as into factories, cities and even modern media. As a result, the experiments ranged from music, poetry and drama to architecture, design, visual communication and city-planning. These ideas of merging art forms into more immersive and transgressive installations or design interventions to change everyday life are widespread today, but their complex and often problematic roots are mostly ignored. Design and architecture have delivered some of the broadest and most influential experiments with the Gesamtkunstwerk, from garden cities for workers and corporate identity design to the German AEG corporation.

The Total Work of Art

The Total Work of Art
Author: David Imhoof
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 178533185X

For two centuries, Gesamtkunstwerk—the ideal of the “total work of art”—has exerted a powerful influence over artistic discourse and practice, spurring new forms of collaboration and provoking debates over the political instrumentalization of art. Despite its popular conflation with the work of Richard Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk’s lineage and legacies extend well beyond German Romanticism, as this wide-ranging collection demonstrates. In eleven compact chapters, scholars from a variety of disciplines trace the idea’s evolution in German-speaking Europe, from its foundations in the early nineteenth century to its manifold articulations and reimaginings in the twentieth century and beyond, providing an uncommonly broad perspective on a distinctly modern cultural form.

Greene & Greene Furniture

Greene & Greene Furniture
Author: David Mathias
Publisher: Popular Woodworking Books
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2010-09-23
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781440302992

One hundred years ago Charles and Henry Greene developed a new and distinctive architectural and decorative style that blended Arts & Crafts and Asian influences with California sensibility and obsessive attention to detail. That innovative style is instantly recognizable today. "David Mathias, author of this richly personal appreciation of the Greenes…comes to Greene and Greene from the perspective of an amateur woodworker with a fine aesthetic sense. Through his writing we are able to appreciate the Greenes' houses and furnishings almost as if we were hearing from one of their builders. Through stunning and perceptive new photography, the illustrated spaces and furnishings illuminate the genius of the Greenes' designs, material selection and craft, which has caused so many to celebrate and be seduced by their work…Being a woodworker, Mathias also pays due homage to John and Peter Hall, the Swedish brothers who worked closely with the Greenes on their finest houses. Mathias correctly grasps how without the Halls, the Greenes would lack a significant measure of the reputation that they enjoy today. Relatively few writers have focused exclusively on Greene and Greene, and so it is a privilege whenever a talented one such as Mr. Mathias comes along. Be forewarned that through this book his seduction may become yours, too." Edward R. Bosley, James N. Gamble Director The Gamble House, Pasadena School of Architecture, University of Southern California

Henry Van de Velde

Henry Van de Velde
Author: Katherine M. Kuenzli
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2019-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0300226667

The painter, designer, and architect Henry van de Velde (1863–1957) played a crucial role in expanding modernist aesthetics beyond Paris and beyond painting. Opposing growing nationalism around 1900, he sought to make painting the basis of an aesthetic that transcended boundaries between the arts and between nations through his work in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Van de Velde’s designs for homes, museums, and theaters received international recognition. The artist, often associated with the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil, developed a style of abstraction that he taught in his School of Applied Arts in Weimar, the immediate precursor of and model for the Bauhaus. As a leading member of the German Werkbund, he helped shaped the fields of modern architecture and design. This long-awaited book, the first major work on van de Velde in English, firmly positions him as one of the twentieth century’s most influential artists and an essential voice within the modern movement.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage

Hendrik Petrus Berlage
Author: Hendrik Petrus Berlage
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 350
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0892363339

Hendrik Petrus Berlage, the Dutch architect and architectural philosopher, created a series of buildings and a body of writings from 1886 to 1909 that were among the first efforts to probe the problems and possibilities of modernism. Although his Amsterdam Stock Exchange, with its rational mastery of materials and space, has long been celebrated for its seminal influence on the architecture of the 20th century, Berlage's writings are highlighted here. Bringing together Berlage's most important texts, among them "Thoughts on Style in Architecture", "Architecture's Place in Modern Aesthetics", and "Art and Society", this volume presents a chapter in the history of European modernism. In his introduction, Iain Boyd Whyte demonstrates that the substantial contribution of Berlage's designs to modern architecture cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the aesthetic principles first laid out in his writings.

Design and Crime (And Other Diatribes)

Design and Crime (And Other Diatribes)
Author: Hal Foster
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2011-01-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1844676706

In these diatribes on the marketing of culture and the branding of identity, the development of spectacle—architecture and the rise of global cities, Hal Foster surveys our new political economy of design. Written in a lively style, Design and Crime explores the historical relations of modern art and modern museum, the conceptual vicissitudes of art history and visual studies, the recent travails of art criticism, and the double aftermath of modernism and postmodernism in an attempt to illuminate the conditions for critical culture in the present.

Gesamtkunstwerke

Gesamtkunstwerke
Author: Hendrik Bohle
Publisher: Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt GmbH
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-10-26
Genre:
ISBN: 9783897906112

- Presentation of the little known pioneering work of Arne Jacobsen in the field of architecture - Accompanies the exhibitions at six places of work of Jacobsen and Weitling throughout Germany - Scandinavian design meets German efficiency The architecture by Arne Jacobsen and Otto Weitling is of outstanding importance for post-war modernism in Germany. The calibre of their projects, however, has been forgotten. Gesamtkunstkwerke closes this gap in the appreciation of their work with a comprehensive presentation of seven out of eight German projects by the Danish master architects. Jacobsen and Weitling's Scandinavian functionalism is a reflection of the visions of the former FRG - designs and commissions grounded in democracy, prestige and efficiency. The publication also takes stock of how the legacy of late modernism is being handled. The journey through the architects' locales leads us to the sea, to model towns and to the intricacies of modernism, prompting a debate in accordance with Otto Weitling: 'Pros and cons would be a positive sign because a building that isn't talked about is usually not worth talking about.' Text in English and German.

Immersion Into Noise

Immersion Into Noise
Author: Joseph Nechvatal
Publisher:
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2020-10-09
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9781013284090

Joseph Nechvatal's Immersion Into Noise investigates multiple aspects of cultural noise by applying our audio understanding of noise to the visual, architectual and cognative domains. The author takes the reader through phenomenal aspects of the art of noise into algorithmic and network contexts, beginning in the Abside of the Grotte de Lascaux. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Histories of Ornament

Histories of Ornament
Author: Gülru Necipoğlu
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2016-03-08
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0691167281

This lavishly illustrated volume is the first major global history of ornament from the Middle Ages to today. Crossing historical and geographical boundaries in unprecedented ways and considering the role of ornament in both art and architecture, Histories of Ornament offers a nuanced examination that integrates medieval, Renaissance, baroque, and modern Euroamerican traditions with their Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Mesoamerican counterparts. At a time when ornament has re-emerged in architectural practice and is a topic of growing interest to art and architectural historians, the book reveals how the long history of ornament illuminates its global resurgence today. Organized by thematic sections on the significance, influence, and role of ornament, the book addresses ornament's current revival in architecture, its historiography and theories, its transcontinental mobility in medieval and early modern Europe and the Middle East, and its place in the context of industrialization and modernism. Throughout, Histories of Ornament emphasizes the portability and politics of ornament, figuration versus abstraction, cross-cultural dialogues, and the constant negotiation of local and global traditions. Featuring original essays by more than two dozen scholars from around the world, this authoritative and wide-ranging book provides an indispensable reference on the histories of ornament in a global context. Contributors include: Michele Bacci (Fribourg University); Anna Contadini (University of London); Thomas B. F. Cummins (Harvard); Chanchal Dadlani (Wake Forest); Daniela del Pesco (Universita degli Studi Roma Tre); Vittoria Di Palma (USC); Anne Dunlop (University of Melbourne); Marzia Faietti (University of Bologna); María Judith Feliciano (independent scholar); Finbarr Barry Flood (NYU); Jonathan Hay (NYU); Christopher P. Heuer (Clark Art); Rémi Labrusse (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense); Gülru Necipoğlu (Harvard); Marco Rosario Nobile (University of Palermo); Oya Pancaroğlu (Bosphorus University); Spyros Papapetros (Princeton); Alina Payne (Harvard); Antoine Picon (Harvard); David Pullins (Harvard); Jennifer L. Roberts (Harvard); David J. Roxburgh (Harvard); Hashim Sarkis (MIT); Robin Schuldenfrei (Courtauld); Avinoam Shalem (Columbia); and Gerhard Wolf (KHI, Florence).