This month, the LA Philharmonic, REDCAT, Hauser & Wirth, and other spaces will stage events celebrating the Weimar Era.
Weimar Germany
Posted inBooks
The Daring, “Degenerate” Book Jackets of the Weimar Republic
Weimar book artists mashed up the styles of new art movements — Expressionism, New Objectivity, Constructivism, plus photography — to design unique and politically provocative covers and jackets.
Posted inOpinion
The Wonderful World of Women in Slacks
CHICAGO — Jill Peters’ photo series Sworn Virgins of Albania went viral last week. For the fascinating and honest portrayal of women who live their lives as men, the artist visited the mountain villages of northern Albania where she shot burneshas, or “women who have lived their lives as men for reasons related to their culture and society.”
Posted inArt
When Modernism Ruled Europe
Between World War I and II, there was a strong gust of classicism that swept through the Western European avant-garde. Artists from across the continent embraced the language of the ancients as a way to reflect their own time and culture. This taste for antique forms can be interpreted in many different ways, including as an attempt to seek order in a tumultuous time, a way to cloak a modern ideology with powerful symbols, or a reaction to the radicalism of the previous decades. Regardless of the root cause or causes, the style that was at once familiar and dignified was a rich source of inspiration for artists, designers, and architects of all types.
This odd chapter in modern art is the subject of the Guggenheim Museum’s current exhibition Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936, which is a very attractive exhibition that gathers together a remarkable array of objects associated with almost every -ism from the era. The power of classicism is partly due to its malleability and how it was able to lend its voice to any and every modern movement that sought refuge in its silhouettes, drapery, linear logic, and airs of history.
