East European Modernism PDF Download

Author: Wojciech G. Lesnikowski
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Suppressed by the former communist governments and overshadowed by a focus on German and Dutch early modernism, the outstanding achievements of functionalist architects in Eastern Europe have been largely ignored by historians and critics. this book is the first retrospective ever published of functionalist buildings completed between the wars, the "Golden Age" of modernism, in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. It is illustrated with rare archival and current photographs of the most famous and exemplary projects in each country: sanatoriums, hotels, sports facilities, private houses, offices, and religious and governmental buildings. Among the illustrious architects whose work is presented here are Karel Teige, Bohuslav Fuchs, and Josef Gocar of Czechoslovakia; Alfred Forbat and Jozsef Fischer of Hungary; and Lucian Korngold, Barbara and Stanislaw Brukalski, and Bohdeon Lachert of Poland. An introductory essay examines functionalism in Eastern Europe from an international perspective; essays by prominent architectural historians from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland explore competing ideas and functionalism in each country.

Author: Martin Kohlrausch
Publisher: Leuven University Press
ISBN: 9462701725
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
The story of modernist architects in East Central Europe The first half of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of modernist architects. Brokers of Modernity reveals how East Central Europe turned into one of the pre-eminent testing grounds of the new belief system of modernism. By combining the internationalism of the CIAM organization and the modernising aspirations of the new states built after 1918, the reach of modernist architects extended far beyond their established fields. Yet, these architects paid a price when Europe’s age of extremes intensified. Mainly drawing on Polish, but also wider Central and Eastern European cases, this book delivers a pioneering study of the dynamics of modernist architects as a group, including how they became qualified, how they organized, communicated and attempted to live the modernist lifestyle themselves. In doing so, Brokers of Modernity raises questions concerning collective work in general and also invites us to examine the social role of architects today. Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Author: Jan C. Behrends
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789633860359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
"The book asks how far the model of the European City can be applied to the cities of Eastern Europe which massively expanded from the second half of the 19th century on but often lacked some of the fundamentals of the European urbanity in the Weberian sense. The authors employ a broad focus and look at metropolitan cities between Helsinki and Athens, Warsaw and Moscow. The period under investigation begins with the 1890s when East European societies entered an 'age of great acceleration' and stops with the outbreak of World War II which not only destroyed but also socially and ethnically altered many metropolitan cities of Eastern Europe. While before the First World War most of Eastern Europe was subsumed in the Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires, new (nation-) states and socialist ideologies shaped post-1918 urban development. For the majority of the new capitals created by the post-war order the state remained the main proponent of change. Both, historical preconditions--the economic situation, the legacy of the empires--and the experience of the upheaval of 1917/18 contributed to this particularity of the region. On the other hand Western Europe and her urban experts continued to be and became even stronger points of reference. The volume discusses the peculiar relationship between state, city and the challenges of modernity in the Eastern Europe with a focus on urban planning in the wider sense of the word. In particular, the different chapters of the book ask how far--given the omnipresent, albeit often idealized example of Western metropolitan cities--a 'reflective modernization' may be identified as a common marker of cities in the region under observation"--Provided by publisher.

Author: S. A. Mansbach
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521450850
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This pioneering and award-winning study provides the world with the first coherent narrative of Eastern European contributions to the modern art movement. Analyzing an enormous range of works, from art centers such as Prague, Warsaw and Budapest, (many published here for the first time), S.A. Mansbach shows that any understanding of Modernism is essentially incomplete without the full consideration of vital Eastern European creative output. He argues that Cubism, Expressionism and Constructivism, along with other great modernist styles, were merged with deeply rooted, Eastern European visual traditions. The art that emerged was vital modernist art that expressed the most pressing concerns of the day, political as well as aesthetic. Mansbach examines the critical reaction of the contemporary artistic culture and political state. A major groundbreaking interpretation of Modernism, Modern Art in Eastern Europe completes any full assessment of twentieth-century art, as well as its history. Modern Art in Eastern Europe is the recipient of the 1997 C.I.N.O.A. Prize, awarded by La Confédération Internationale de Négociants en Oeuvres d'Art. The prize is awarded to defray the costs of publication in order to encourage publishers to produce maunscripts of particular merit and the works of younger art historians.

Author: Beáta Hock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351187171
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This edited collection reassesses East-Central European art by offering transnational perspectives on its regional or national histories, while also inserting the region into contemporary discussions of global issues. Both in popular imagination and, to some degree, scholarly literature, East-Central Europe is persistently imagined as a hermetically isolated cultural landscape. This book restores the diverse ways in which East-Central European art has always been entangled with actors and institutions in the wider world. The contributors engage with empirically anchored and theoretically argued case studies from historical periods representing notable junctures of globalization: the early modern period, the age of Empires, the time of socialist rule and the global Cold War, and the most recent decades of postsocialism understood as a global condition.

Author: Kimberly Elman Zarecor
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082297780X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Eastern European prefabricated housing blocks are often vilified as the visible manifestations of everything that was wrong with state socialism. For many inside and outside the region, the uniformity of these buildings became symbols of the dullness and drudgery of everyday life. Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity complicates this common perception. Analyzing the cultural, intellectual, and professional debates surrounding the construction of mass housing in early postwar Czechoslovakia, Zarecor shows that these housing blocks served an essential function in the planned economy and reflected an interwar aesthetic, derived from constructivism and functionalism, that carried forward into the 1950s. With a focus on prefabricated and standardized housing built from 1945 to 1960, Zarecor offers broad and innovative insights into the country's transition from capitalism to state socialism. She demonstrates that during this shift, architects and engineers consistently strove to meet the needs of Czechs and Slovaks despite challenging economic conditions, a lack of material resources, and manufacturing and technological limitations. In the process, architects were asked to put aside their individual creative aspirations and transform themselves into technicians and industrial producers. Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity is the first comprehensive history of architectural practice and the emergence of prefabricated housing in the Eastern Bloc. Through discussions of individual architects and projects, as well as building typologies, professional associations, and institutional organization, it opens a rare window into the cultural and economic life of Eastern Europe during the early postwar period.

Author: Regina Elsner
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838215680
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) faced various iterations of modernization throughout its history. This conflicted encounter continues in the ROC’s current resistance against—what it perceives as—Western modernity including liberal and secular values. This study examines the historical development of the ROC’s arguments against—and sometimes preferences for—modernization and analyzes which positions ended up influencing the official doctrine. The book’s systematic analysis of dogmatic treatises shows the ROC’s considerable ability of constructive engagement with various aspects of the modern world. Balancing between theological traditions of unity and plurality, the ROC’s today context of operating within an authoritarian state appears to tip the scale in favor of unity.

Author: Galina Mardilovich
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429639783
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This book brings together thirteen scholars to introduce the newest and most cutting-edge research in the field of Russian and East European art history. Reconsidering canonical figures, re-examining prevalent debates, and revisiting aesthetic developments, the book challenges accepted histories and entrenched dichotomies in art and architecture from the nineteenth century to the present. In doing so, it resituates the artistic production of this region within broader socio-cultural currents and analyzes its interconnections with international discourse, competing political and aesthetic ideologies, and continuous discussions over identity.

Author: Shona Kallestrup
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000602079
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
This volume critically investigates how art historians writing about Central and Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries engaged with periodization. At the heart of much of their writing lay the ideological project of nation-building. Hence discourses around periodization – such as the mythicizing of certain periods, the invention of historical continuity and the assertion of national specificity – contributed strongly to identity construction. Central to the book’s approach is a transnational exploration of how the art histories of the region not only interacted with established Western periodizations but also resonated and ‘entangled’ with each other. In their efforts to develop more sympathetic frameworks that refined, ignored or hybridized Western models, they sought to overcome the centre–periphery paradigm which equated distance from the centre with temporal belatedness and artistic backwardness. The book thus demonstrates that the concept of periodization is far from neutral or strictly descriptive, and that its use in art history needs to be reconsidered. Bringing together a broad range of scholars from different European institutions, the volume offers a unique new perspective on Central and Eastern European art historiography. It will be of interest to scholars working in art history, historiography and European studies.

Author: Diana Mishkova
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860954
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
The last volume of the Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945 series presents 46 texts under the heading of "antimodernism". In a dynamic relationship with modernism, from the 1880s to the 1940s, and especially during the interwar period, the antimodernist political discourse in the region offered complex ideological constructions of national identification. These texts rejected the linear vision of progress and instead offered alternative models of temporality, such as the cyclical one as well as various narratives of decline. This shift was closely connected to the rejection of liberal democratic institutionalism, and the preference for organicist models of social existence, emphasizing the role of the elites (and charismatic leaders) shaping the whole body politic. Along these lines, antimodernist authors also formulated alternative visions of symbolic geography: rejecting the symbolic hierarchies that focused on the normativity of Western European models, they stressed the cultural and political autarchy of their own national community, which in some cases was also coupled with the reevaluation of the Orient. At the same time, this antimodernist turn should not be confused with rightwing radicalism—in fact, the dialogue with the modernist tradition was often very subtle and the anthology also contains texts which offered a criticism of 'modern' totalitarianism in an antimodernist key.