Luxury and Modernism
Luxury and Modernism

Author: Robin Schuldenfrei

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1400890489

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While modernism was publicized as a fusion of technology, new materials, and rational aesthetics to improve the lives of ordinary people, it was often out of reach to the very masses it purportedly served. Luxury and Modernism shows how luxury was present in bold, literal forms in modern designs—from lavish materials and costly technologies to deluxe buildings and household objects—and in subtler ways as well, such as social milieus and modes of living. In a period of social unrest and extreme wealth disparity between the common worker and those at the helm of capitalist enterprises generating immense profits, architects envisioned modern designs providing solutions for a more equitable future. Robin Schuldenfrei exposes the disconnect between modernism's utopian discourse and its luxury objects and elite architectural commissions. Despite the movement's egalitarian rhetoric, many modern designs addressed the desires of the privileged individual. Yet as Schuldenfrei demonstrates, luxury was integral not only to how modern buildings and objects were designed, manufactured, and sold, but has contributed to modernism's appeal to this day. This beautifully illustrated book provides a new interpretation of modern architecture and design in Germany during the heyday of the Bauhaus and the Werkbund, tracing modernism's lasting allure to its many manifestations of luxury. Schuldenfrei casts the work of legendary figures such as Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in an entirely different light, revealing the complexities and contradictions inherent to modernism's promotion and consumption.

Luxury and Modern Architecture in Germany, 1900--1933
Luxury and Modern Architecture in Germany, 1900--1933

Author: Robin Schaefer Schuldenfrei

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13:

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This dissertation examines the tension between the modern movement's theories and self-conceptions and its artistic output by studying the discourses of intellectuals and architects who framed the period debates and the architectural and domestic objects the movement produced. The lens through which it examines them is the period notion of luxury, rarely thought central to modernism given its interest in mass housing and mass production. The dissertation argues instead that modernism was conceived and sold through a combination of conformity to bourgeois expectations of luxury and redefinition of them--responding to and seeking to satisfy, but also reshape, the norms and desires of elites. It considers the foremost artists and architects of the period, who discussed the object's role in society while designing products, looking specifically at the design and marketing of electrical appliances by Peter Behrens at the AEG and in its Berlin stores, the relationship between consumption of Bauhaus objects and efforts at their mass production, and notions of interiority in the domestic commissions of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Modern architecture in germany: between 1900 and 1933
Modern architecture in germany: between 1900 and 1933

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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O objetivo da Dissertação é o estudo da Arquitetura Moderna Alemã, dascondições sociais, políticas e econômicas em que ela foi elaborada, de seusantecedentes teóricos e sua participação no Movimento Moderno. O períodoestudado neste trabalho abrange os trinta anos iniciais do século XX, até a chegadados Nazistas ao poder na Alemanha, em 1933. A Alemanha passou, em um espaçode tempo de 60 anos, por guerras e mudanças políticas profundas que unificaram opaís em 1870, transformaram-na em uma república democrática em 1918 e, com achegada dos Nazistas ao poder em 1933, em uma ditadura. A Primeira GuerraMundial afetou toda a Europa e, principalmente, a Alemanha derrotada, estabelecendo um marco divisor da produção arquitetônica. Além das questõespolíticas, trata-se de uma época marcada por profundas transformações da ciência eda tecnologia afetando as relações econômicas, as condições de trabalho, aindústria, a família, a vida humana individual e coletivamente, a cidade, os objetosda vida diária, desde os utensílios até a moradia. Os profissionais deste períodotiveram de dar conta desse novo conjunto de condições que passou a determinar omundo em que viveriam a partir de então. Esses anos foram definitivos para aarquitetura alemã e para a arquitetura moderna, não apenas pela incorporação denovas idéias, mas pelas atitudes práticas tomadas em relação aos problemascontemporâneos.

GROWING UP MODERN
GROWING UP MODERN

Author: Julia Jamrozik

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2021-03-08

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 3035620318

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What was it like to grow up in a Modernist residence? Did these radical environments shape the way that children looked at architecture later in life? The oral history in this book paint a uniquely intimate portrait of Modernism. The authors conducted interviews with people, who spent their childhood in radical Modernist domestic spaces, uncovering both serene and poignant memories. The recollections range from the ambivalence of philosopher Ernst Tugendhat, now 90 years old, who lived in the famous Mies van der Rohe house in Brno (1930) to the fond reminiscing of the youngest daughter of the Schminke family, who still dreams of her Scharoun-designed ship-like villa in Löbau (1933). The book offers a unique, private and often refreshing perspective on these icons of the avant-garde.

Products, Users, and Popular Luxury in Early Modern Greece
Products, Users, and Popular Luxury in Early Modern Greece

Author: Artemis Yagou

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-08-05

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1040110614

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This book analyses aspects of the material culture of early modern Greece from an object-based perspective, using surviving artefacts from that period as primary sources. A printed book, a wine jug, an ecclesiastical embroidery, and a pocket watch are used as entry points to examine the consumer practices of the emerging Greek bourgeoisie under Ottoman rule in the long eighteenth century. The acquisition and usage of novel products – especially imported ones – by Greeks was connected to personal expression, identity building, and self-determination in the context of the Enlightenment. The enjoyment of innovative artefacts opened new horizons to them and facilitated their individual and collective empowerment. The originality of the book lies in its eclectic and interdisciplinary approach towards early modern Greek material culture, an under-researched topic. The study is embedded within contemporary discourses on transnational trade, the materiality of everyday life, pleasurable consumption, and the negotiation of identities. This volume will appeal to students and scholars of early modern and modern Greek history, Ottoman history, European history, material culture, history of technology, museum studies, and cultural heritage studies, as well as museum professionals, collectors, and the wider educated public.

Vienna and the New Wohnkultur, 1918-1938
Vienna and the New Wohnkultur, 1918-1938

Author: Michelle Jackson-Beckett

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-03-20

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0198879512

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While the domestic sphere might seem tangential to the dire political situation and humanitarian crises of interwar Europe, it was nevertheless at the forefront of debates about cultural identity and economic policy in the Viennese press, culture, and arts. Vienna and the New Wohnkultur, 1918-1938 explores why and how the Viennese design landscape was set apart--aesthetically and theoretically--from other European explorations of modern design. Jackson-Beckett examines interior design exhibitions, press, and debates about modern living in interwar Vienna, an overlooked area of modern European architecture and design history, arguing for a reconsideration of the contours of European modernism. The text analyses varied interpretations of modern domestic culture (Wohnkultur) in Vienna, and explores why these interpretations were distinct from other strands of European modernism. Vienna and the New Wohnkultur introduces new research and translation of primary sources on flexible, adaptable, and affordable design by architects, designers, and retailers. Vienna's design discourse also prefigured important postmodern and contemporary discussions on historicism, eclecticism, empathy, and user experience. Through extensive new research in archival and period sources, Jackson-Beckett illustrates how design ideas, taste, and portrayals of domestic culture of fin-de-si?cle Viennese Modernism (Wiener Moderne) were also deployed as forms of cultural and national identity both during the early years of the Social Democratic government in Vienna (1918-1934) and later under the fascist state (1934-1938).

Barbarian Architecture
Barbarian Architecture

Author: Joanna Merwood-Salisbury

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2024-04-02

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0262547414

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A richly visual architectural history and theory of modernity that reexamines Thorstein Veblen’s classic text The Theory of the Leisure Class through the lens of Chicago in the 1890s. An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious and wasteful display of goods in the service of social status—a term he coined in his 1899 classic The Theory of the Leisure Class. In the field of architectural history, scholars have employed Veblen in support of a wide range of arguments about modern architecture, but never has he attracted a comprehensive and critical treatment from the viewpoint of architectural history. In Barbarian Architecture, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury corrects this omission by reexamining Veblen’s famous book as an original theory of modernity and situating it in a particular place and time—Chicago in the 1890s. Merwood-Salisbury takes her title from Veblen’s use of the term “barbarian,” which refers to his belief that Gilded Age American society was a last remnant of a barbarian state of greed and acquisitiveness. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws on biography, intellectual history, and historiography, she explores Veblen’s position in relation to debates about industrial reform and aesthetics in Chicago during the period 1890–1906. Bolstered by a strong visual narrative made possible by several of Chicago’s historic photographic collections, Barbarian Architecture makes a compelling and original argument for the influence of Veblen’s home city on his work and ideas.

Jugendstil Women and the Making of Modern Design
Jugendstil Women and the Making of Modern Design

Author: Sabine Wieber

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-10-21

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1350088536

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Jugendstil, that is Germany's distinct engagement with the international Art Nouveau movement, is now firmly engrained in histories of modern art, architecture and design. Recent exhibitions and publications across the world explored Jugendstil's key protagonists and artistic centres to firmly anchor their activities within the trajectories of German modernism. Women, however, continue to be largely absent from these revisionist accounts. Jugendstil Women and the Making of Modern Design argues that women in fact actively participated in the cultural and socio-economic exchanges that generated German design responses to European modernity. By drawing on previously unpublished archival material and a series of original case studies including Elsa Bruckmann's Munich salon, the Photo Studio Elvira and the Debschitz School, the book explores women's important contributions to modern German culture as collectors, consumers, critics, designers, educators, and patrons. This book offers a new interpretation of this vibrant period by considering diverse manifestations of historical female agency that pushed against historically entrenched conventions and gender roles. The book's rigorous approach reshapes Jugendstil historiography by positing women's lived experiences against dominant ideologies that emerged at this precise moment. In short, the book advocates women as an integral part of the emergence, dissemination and reception of Jugendstil and questions the deeply gendered histories of this key period in modern art, architecture and design.

Bauhaus Bodies
Bauhaus Bodies

Author: Elizabeth Otto

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2019-01-24

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 1501344803

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A century after the Bauhaus's founding in 1919, this book reassesses it as more than a highly influential art, architecture, and design school. In myriad ways, emerging ideas about the body in relation to health, movement, gender, and sexuality were at the heart of art and life at the school. Bauhaus Bodies reassesses the work of both well-known Bauhaus members and those who have unjustifiably escaped scholarly scrutiny, its women in particular. In fourteen original, cutting-edge essays by established experts and emerging scholars, this book reveals how Bauhaus artists challenged traditional ideas about bodies and gender. Written to appeal to students, scholars, and the broad public, Bauhaus Bodies will be essential reading for anyone interested in modern art, architecture, design history, and gender studies; it will define conversations and debates during the 2019 centenary of the Bauhaus's founding and beyond.

Bauhaus Goes West: Modern Art and Design in Britain and America
Bauhaus Goes West: Modern Art and Design in Britain and America

Author: Alan Powers

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Published: 2019-08-20

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 050077465X

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An exploration of the Bauhaus school and its legacy in the context of the modernist period, including its wider influence on art, design, and education. Bauhaus Goes West is the story of cultural and artistic exchange between Germany and the West over a period of seventy years. It presents a view of the influential Bauhaus school in relation to the wider modernist period, distinguishing between the received idea of the Bauhaus and the documented reality. Initially, the Bauhaus was seen as an educational experiment, only later was it recognized as a style and a movement. Working from meticulous research, Alan Powers reexamines speculations about the reception and understanding of individuals connected with the Bauhaus school and what they ultimately achieved. Looking in greater detail at the theory and practice of art, design, and architecture between the arts and crafts movement and modernism, this book challenges the assumption that the 1920s represented a void of reactionary conservatism. Bauhaus Goes West offers an opportunity to recover some of the overlooked aspects of avant-garde that ran parallel with the work of the Bauhaus, such as the film-making of Francis Brugui re and Len Lye, and the development of art instruction for children under Marion Richardson and the London County Council.