Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900-1933 by Robin Schuldenfrei / Princeton University Press / 2018 / 978-0691175126 / 338 pages with 74 color and 126 black and white illustrations. In this study showcasing the paradoxes --- hypocrisies even --- of some of German Modernism’s most illustrious utopian architects and object-makers, Robin … [Read more...]
Book Review: Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character
Kay Redfield Jamison. Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character. (New York: Knopf, 2017) 560 pages with extensive clinical footnotes, primary source documents, and passages from Lowell’s oeuvre. In a certain way, Robert Lowell (1917-1977), widely acclaimed in his lifetime as the curator of his mania and thus its commander, seems a … [Read more...]
Mernet Larsen: Getting Measured, 1957-2017
Mernet Larsen: Getting Measured, 1957-2017. The Tampa Museum of Art, 120 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa. On view through 18 February 2018. Curated by Joanna Robotham, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Tampa Museum of Art. There is no dedicated catalog for this exhibition but Mernet Larsen by John Yau (Damiani, 2013) is a monograph focusing on Larsen’s work since … [Read more...]
The Tempest and the Savages: Franz Marc, Hugo Ball, and a Decisive Moment in Dada-Expressionist Theater With a Special Appearance by August Macke
Introduction This article discusses Franz Marc’s 1914 essay “Das abstrakte Theater”1 (Fig. 01), and the events surrounding an “Expressionist” production of Shakespeare’s Der Sturm planned by Marc and Hugo Ball the same year. Marc’s position in this detour from painting and writing can be understood in terms of his embrace of “die ‘Wilden’” – “the ‘Savages’” – an idea Marc … [Read more...]
Between Something and Nothing: Franz Marc’s Authorial Ether
A painter and writer who was born and lived most of his life in Bavaria, Franz Marc was one of the key protagonists in the great European debate on the nature and the goals of art at the beginning of the 20th century. Marc’s and Wassily Kandinsky’s 1911 hybrid art-book the Blaue Reiter Almanac was immediately hailed as a turning point in the practice of artists providing … [Read more...]
