The subject of the analysis and interpretation contained in this text is El Lissitzky's work Self-Portrait as a Constructor from 1924. The text aims to indicate that El Lissitzky could have been ...inspired by two works by Marc Chagall: "Homage to Apollinaire" and "Dedicated to Christ" of 1912. The paper also attempts to interpret the Self-Portrait in a broader kabbalistic perspective. As it turns out, apart from his fascination with Kazimir Malevich's profile and Suprematism, Lissitzky was also well acquainted with the sphere of Jewish mysticism. In light of this, the work discussed in the article (apart from another work by the artist: "The Red Wedge of Beating the Whites" from 1919), one can clearly point to many themes of the Jewish Kabbalah, including such concepts as Ein Sof (the Endless/Infinite), Ayin (The Void), Iyun (Annihilation), Tzimtzum (Shrinkage/Disappearance), Shvirat kelim (Breaking of the vessels), piercing of the "Eye of Evil" and the general idea of Tikkun Olam (Repairing of the World).
Walter Schübler’s biography paints a portrait of the extravagant bon vivant Anton Kuh with all his facets: the militant publicist, whose polemical squibs provided a running commentary to happenings ...in Vienna and Berlin, the alert chronicler of the 1910s, 20s and 30s, the avowed leftist, who risked his neck in conflicts with the Nazis, the oppositionist, who enjoyed teasing Karl Kraus, the bohemian, who took every chance to provoke, even when this was programmatically tactless, the neurasthenic with a self-destructive lifestyle, the phenomenal impromptu speaker, whose thoughts ran hot and whose audience responded with thunderous applause. The first biography of this »speech-actor« reconstructs the main body of Kuh’s work – the impromptu speeches – and calls into question all of the rumors that are still circulating about this assumed »local hero«.
Walter Schüblers Biographie porträtiert den extravaganten Lebenskünstler Anton Kuh in all seinen Facetten: den streitbaren Publizisten, der die laufenden Wiener und Berliner Ereignisse mit polemischer Verve glossierte; den hellwachen Chronisten der 1910er, 1920er und 1930er Jahre; den bekennenden »Linksler«, der in der Auseinandersetzung mit den Nazis Kopf und Kragen riskierte; den »Gegenteils-Fex«, der sich einen Spaß daraus machte, Karl Kraus über Jahre zu frotzeln; den Bohemien, der – programmatisch taktlos – keine Gelegenheit ausließ zu provozieren; den aufgekratzten Neurastheniker, der geradezu selbstmörderisch lebte; den fulminanten Stegreif-Redner, der seine Gedankengänge heißlaufen ließ und damit sein Publikum zu Beifallsstürmen hinriss. Diese erste Biographie des »Sprechstellers« rekonstruiert auch dessen Hauptwerk - die Stegreif-Reden - und wirft alles über den Haufen, was an Gerüchten über die vermeintliche Wiener »Lokalgröße« immer noch kursiert.
This article retraces the sources that influenced the ideas that Russian artist El Lissitzky held about the encounter between human beings and nature during his stay in Europe in the early 1920s. ...Notes and private correspondence held in the Special Collections of the Getty Research Institute detail an interest in Austro-Hungarian biologist Raoul Heinrich Francé’s concepts from Die Pflanze als Erfinder (1920; Plants as Inventors, 1923) and Bios: Die Gesetze der Welt (1921; Bios: The laws of the world), along with other new sources that relate to the philosophical debate around Albert Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity. A close reading of these sources and Lissitzky’s interest in them enables a reconsideration of what Oliver A. I. Botar describes as Lissitzky’s “biocentric turn” and the artist’s closely connected book project “1=1.”
In the design for a horizontal skyscraper that he dubbed his Wolkenbügel, El Lissitzky created one of the most celebrated architectural forms of the Soviet avant-gardes "heroic" period. Although ...presented in response to a series of questions about urban circulation, land use, and the integration of transit systems, the Wolkenbügel also stoked debate over the relative priority of form and utility in architecture. As a more focused response to these latter concerns, Lissitzky proposed a second Wolkenbügel design. A newly emerged drawing makes a reconstruction of thi second building possible and clarifies Lissitzky's sources, working process, and attitude toward Constructivism.
Cut and Paste Evans, David
History of photography,
04/2019, Letnik:
43, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Published posthumously, this article begins with a discussion of the historiography - and a related exhibition history - of the terms collage, photo-collage, and photomontage; and of the criteria ...that have been used to distinguish them as techniques, as visual idioms, and for their political implications and resonances as images of fine or applied art. The article then moves on to the work of two living artists who have been cutting and pasting photographs for more than forty years, Martha Rosler and John Stezaker, and the ambiguities of their being described as collagists, monteurs, or photomonteurs. In rethinking these categories, Evans argues for an expansive history of photomontage and collage that has continuing resonance today.
The development of new spatial and temporal conceptions in twentieth-century art is examined through the prism of the ideas of El Lissitzky's text "Art and Pangeometry." A comparative analysis of ...space-time models in art, mathematics and physics indicates that at the beginning of the twentieth century, artistic experiments "had fallen behind" in the intensity of their conceptual construction of space. This text analyzes the ways in which irrational spaces were modeled in the theory and practice of El Lissitzky and the avant-garde in tandem with the move towards an artistic image of space-time.
The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British labour market experienced an influx of female clerical workers. Employers argued that female employment increased opportunities for men to ...advance; however, most male clerks regarded this expansion of the labour supply as a threat to their pay and status. This article examines the effects of female employment on male clerks using data from Williams Deacon's Bank covering a period 25 years prior to and 25 years subsequent to the initial employment of women. It is shown that, within position, women were substitutes for younger men, but not for senior men. In addition, the employment of women in routine positions allowed the bank to expand its branch network, creating new higher-level positions, which were almost always filled by men.
Today, the term "Jewish self-hatred" often denotes a treasonous brand of Jewish self-loathing, and is frequently used as a smear, such as when it is applied to politically moderate Jews who are ...critical of Israel.In On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred, Paul Reitter demonstrates that the concept of Jewish self-hatred once had decidedly positive connotations. He traces the genesis of the term to Anton Kuh, a Viennese-Jewish journalist who coined it in the aftermath of World War I, and shows how the German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing came, in 1930, to write a book that popularized "Jewish self-hatred." Reitter contends that, as Kuh and Lessing used it, the concept of Jewish self-hatred described a complex and possibly redemptive way of being Jewish. Paradoxically, Jews could show the world how to get past the blight of self-hatred only by embracing their own, singularly advanced self-critical tendencies--their "Jewish self-hatred."
Provocative and elegantly argued,On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatredchallenges widely held notions about the history and meaning of this idea, and explains why its history is so badly misrepresented today.
The career and aesthetic theory of writer, editor and literary critic Edward J. O'Brien is discussed. It is asserted that, in his Best American Short Stories series, O'Brien was attempting to revive ...what he saw as an American national literary tradition.
