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Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and transformation, 1910-1930

Timothy O. Benson (ed.)
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
439 pp., illus. b/w & col.
ISBN 0-262-02522-1
1. Art, European, Central, 20th century, exhibitions.

Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
Polar (Posthuman Laboratory for Arts Research)
pepperell@ntlworld.com

"Art must becomes international or it will perish."

Art histories have often been carved out along geographical lines, and this collection of essays addresses itself to what is possibly a neglected yet significant location: the vast and numerous nations sandwiched between the Russian Empire to the East and the Gallic and Mediterranean countries to the West. The historical period covered here was one of extraordinary upheaval, as a map comparing national boundaries between 1910 and 1930 clearly shows. Within just 20 years empires collapsed and new nations were born. What remained throughout, however, were the various cosmopolitan centres of culture like Belgrade, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw, and perhaps most centrally, Berlin. This book, produced to accompany a major exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, offers a survey of the many artistic styles and moods which these cities sustained during the zenith of early Modernism. The survey is conducted largely through a series of essays by critics specialising in the artistic culture of each of the fourteen locales under scrutiny.

"Art must becomes international or it will perish." So rang the optimistic statement of the Union of Progressive Artists intended to rally those participating in the First International Exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1922. Of all the Modernist styles on display - Fauvism, Futurism, Cubism, Dada, and Purism — perhaps the most characteristically central-European, but also the most internationally minded and self-consciously utopian was Constructivism. Many of its adherents saw it as an aesthetic expression of scientific rationalism and as a contribution to social reconstruction and a better world order. Accordingly, Christina Lodder’s excellent essay on International Constructivism is central both in its placement in the book and in connecting Russian avant-gardism to central European graphical concerns. The work shown in this chapter, and in the book generally, demonstrates how vibrant, dynamic and progressive was the output of a whole generation in the greater part of Europe. It is work that, despite its often misplaced optimism and political naivety, rings with colour, imagination and creative confidence.

It is a credit to the exhibition organisers, authors, and publishers that all this material is made available in such an accessible and authoritative form. With some fifteen essays, artists’ biographies, a selected bibliography, and high-quality reproductions, I’m sure this volume would be a necessary addition to any scholarly art library.

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Updated 2nd February 2003


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