Remediating the Avant-Garde

Magazines and Digital Archives

October 25–26, 2013 | Princeton University

This interdisciplinary conference will explore the conceptual and practical ground where traditional area studies, periodical studies, digital humanities, computer science, and library and information science converge.

We are interested in how these fields inform each other and challenge us to think and create in new ways, both as builders of digital resources and as scholars and teachers of avant-garde periodicals.

Click here for more information.

Forthcoming Publications

Generation Dada
The Berlin Avant-Garde and the First World War
Michael White
Yale University Press
Publication date: 31 Oct 2013
ISBN: 9780300169034
288 pages - 20 colour images + 130 black-&-white illustrations
See more at: http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9780300169034


For the Berlin Dadaists, their identity as a collective - Club Dada, to members - was an integral part of their artistic practice. But the circumstances that brought together the likes of George Grosz, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann and Johannes Baader - renamed Propaganda Marshall, Monteurdada, Dadasoph and Oberdada within the organization - have remained largely unexamined until now. Drawing on extensive archival research, this book documents the group's beginnings in wartime Berlin and reveals how these relationships influenced its provocative acts, which were inextricably tied to the era's chaos and brutality. Studying how the Dadaists saw themselves as a new generation - in contrast to their pacifist forbears, the Expressionists - the book sheds light on key developments and events, such as the First International Dada Fair, held in Berlin in 1920. It also offers the first serious consideration of the group's role in constructing its own legacy, even as the works were deliberately rooted in the ephemeral.

After Dada
Marta Hegemann and the Cologne avant-garde
Dorothy Rowe
Manchester University Press
Publication date: September 2013
ISBN 978-0-7190-9007-3
240 pages -
See more at: http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9780719090073

What happened in 1920s Cologne ‘after Dada’? Whilst most standard accounts of Cologne Dada simply stop with Max Ernst’s departure from the city for a new life as a surrealist in Paris, this book reveals the untold stories of the Cologne avant-garde that prospered after Dada but whose legacies have been largely forgotten or neglected. It focuses on the little-known Magical Realist painter Marta Hegemann (1894–1970). By re-inserting her into the histories of avant-garde modernism, a fuller picture of the gendered networks of artistic and cultural exchange within Weimar Germany can be revealed. This book embeds her activities as an artist within a gendered network of artistic exchange and influence in which Ernst continues to play a vital role amongst many others including his first wife, art critic Lou Straus-Ernst; photographers August Sander and Hannes Flach; artists Angelika Fick, Heinrich Hoerle, Willy Fick and the Cologne Progressives and visitors such as Kurt Schwitters and Katherine Dreier.

Angelika Hoerle

Angelika Hoerle. Comet of the Cologne Avant-garde
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
September 26, 2009-January 17, 2010
exhibition flyer

Angelika Fick Hoerle (1899-1923) lived hard and died young. In spite of her youth, she left a promising artistic legacy. Moving through the influences of WW I, the German Revolution and Dada, she developed artistic styles that foreshadowed Surrealism and the Cologne Progressives.

Angelika's apartment in Lindenthal, the ‘dadaheim' with its Schloemilch Verlag, was both a meeting place and the publishing house for Max Ernst's Fiat Modes and the international Dada magazine, Die Schammade. Nicknamed "Dada Angelika" by friends and dubbed the German Master of Dada by a newspaper, Angelika went on to co-found the Stupid Group and become a voice for women along with her best friend Marta Hegeman. When Angelika died of tuberculosis at 22 years of age, her brother, the artist Willy Fick, paid the back rent on the apartment where she had lived alone since the fall of 1922; he wanted to save her things. Willy Fick hid Angelika's works, and those of her politically active friends, from the National Socialists when the artists represented were labelled degenerate.

See also: Angelika Hoerle: The Comet of Cologne Dada an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

Breaking the Rules

The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900 - 1937
British Library, London
9 November 2007 - 30 March 2008

Mainly through the medium of print, 'Breaking the Rules' throws new light on Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, Suprematism, Constructivism, Surrealism and other movements; on the artists who changed the face of modern culture for ever; and on the cities that experienced their work, from Brussels to Budapest, Vienna to Vitebsk.

Star items include Marinetti's futurist experiment with words, type and visual text, Zang Tumb Tuum; the Burliuk Brothers' Tango with Cows; and the notebooks and corrected proofs of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

In addition to browsing books, manifestos, flyers, posters and even album covers, you can see remarkable films and listen to rare historic recordings.

The exhibition came quite late to my attention. I visited London this weekend and found the announcement in a bookshop. If you have the opportunity to see it: do it! It is worth while.

A fine catalogue is available.

The exhibition (and catalogue) is reviewed by Antoine Capet for The Art Tribune (March 2008) and by Mick Herron for Bookdealer No. 1790 (March 2008).

Kurt Schwitters and the Avant-Garde

Symposium 2007
Kurt Schwitters und die Avantgarde

Proceedings presented at the symposium held on June 29 through July 1, 2007 at the Sprengel Museum Hannover:

1. Neue Kunst – Kunstismen – Merzgebiete, Hubert van den Berg
2. Der Merzbau im Kontext des Architektonischen, Hanne Bergius
3. Kurt Schwitters und die Mystik, Götz-Lothar Darsow
4. Die „Kathedrale“ im Werk von Kurt Schwitters, Curt Germundson
5. Cicero, the Roman Hitler, Karin Orchard
6. Künstlerinnen im Umfeld von Kurt Schwitter, Isabel Schulz
7. Kurt Schwitters and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Adrian Sudhalter
8. Der unzeitgemässe Schwitters, Beat Wyss

Avant-Garde and Criticism

Avant-Garde and Criticism
Klaus Beekman and Jan de Vries (Eds.)
Amsterdam/New York NY, 2007
361 pp.
ISBN 978-90-420-2152-5
Series: Avant-Garde Critical Studies 21

Table of Contents:

• Klaus BEEKMAN and Jan de VRIES: Introduction. Criticism and Avant-Garde
• Jean-Roch BOUILLER: Art Criticism and Avant-Garde: André Lhote’s Written Works
• Ben REBEL: Architectural Criticism in de 8 en OPBOUW
• Ansje van BEUSEKOM: Theo van Doesburg and Writings on Film in De Stijl
• Peter G.F. EVERSMANN: The International Theatre Exhibition of 1922 and the Critics
• Nico LAAN: The Making of a Reputation: the Case of Cobra
• Hugo VERDAASDONK: Avant-Garde Reviewing of New Book Releases. A Case Study from The Netherlands
• Willem G. WESTSTEIJN: Mayakovsky as Literary Critic
• Gregor LANGFELD: German Art in The Netherlands before and after World War II
• Arie HARTOG: Banality in Art Criticism. Comments on the Reception of Art in the German Daily Press of the 1920s
• Hubert F. van den BERG: A Victorious Campaign for Dadaism? On the Press Coverage of the Dutch Dada Tour of 1923
• Klaus BEEKMAN: The Inevitability of Argumentative Criticism. Theo van Doesburg and the Constructive Review
• Ralf GRÜTTEMEIER: On Intentionality and Avant-Garde Criticism
• Wiljan van den AKKER and Gillis DORLEIJN: Resistance to the Avant-Garde. Criticism of the Avant-Garde in Dutch Literary Periodicals
• Sabine van WESEMAEL: Dutch Contemporaries on Proust and the Historic Avant-Garde
• Hestia BAVELAAR: The Writing Artists of the Magazine Kroniek van Kunst en Kultuur (Chronicle of Art and Culture) in the Period 1935-1941

Read more on the page of the publisher and Amazon.com [search inside].