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.

Zenit, Svetokret, Dada tank, Dada Jok and Dada Jazz

Zenit, Svetokret, Dada tank, Dada Jok and Dada Jazz
The Complete Reprint of the avant-garde magazines first published in
Zagreb and Belgrade 1921-1926. It is a limited edition of 320 copies, with all the copies numbered.

The reprint consists of a total of 42 volumes and foreword including data about the edition and an Introduction in English.

All the issues of the journal Zenit (1-43) have been reprinted, in 36 volumes as well as the Zenithist Manifesto, the journals Svetokret, Dada Tank (uncensored edition), Dada Tank 2nd edition (censored), Dada Jok, Dada Jazz and the manifesto Nemo propheta in patria.

The edition faithfully reproduces the journal from the time of its publication in the 1920s.

For more information see the online flyer.

Publication: G: An Avant-Garde Journal

G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923-1926
Edited by Detlef Mertins and Michael W. Jennings
Getty Research Institute : 2010
280 pages; 22 color and 134 b/w illustrations
ISBN 978-1-60606-039-1.

First published in 1923, the journal G: Material zur Elementaren Gestaltung (G: Materials for Elemental Form-Creation) helped shape a new phase in the history of the European avant-garde. Founded by Hans Richter, a pioneer of abstract animated film, G featured works by some of the important names in the advanced cultures of Europe: Hans Arp, Walter Benjamin, Theo van Doesburg, Viking Eggeling, Naum Gabo, Werner Graeff, George Grosz, Hugo Häring, Raoul Hausmann, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Frederick Kiesler, El Lissitzky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Antoine Pevsner, Man Ray, and Tristan Tzara.

This edition, the first in English translation, preserves the original design by Lissitzky, Richter, and Graeff, and includes essays that explore the role of the journal in its time and in relation to contemporary culture. An introduction analyzes the principles of the journal, situates it in the culture of the early 1920s, and evaluates its achievements.

This book is structured into two parts: first, a series of essays which provide analysis on the major areas of visual culture explored in G and second, the translated-to-English facsimile of the journal itself. With an overview which situates G and its major contributors in historical context begins the essay portion of the book. Other essays follow, one on each subject in the book’s title: Maria Gough on El Lissitzky’s contributions to G’s graphic design; subsequent essays by Edward Dimendberg on film, and Detlef Mertins on architecture, are also well-researched and informative.

In the second part of the book, a carefully constructed facsimile of G is presented, that is true to original documents held in the Museum of Modern Art, except the German text was translated into English.

Conference Modernist Magazines Project

Modernism, Cultural Exchange and Transnationality: The Second Conference of the Modernist Magazines Project
Venue: Sussex, 15-17 July 2009
Key Note Speakers: Mark Morrisson (Penn State University, author of The Public Face of Modernism: Little Magazines, Audiences and Reception, 1905 -1920), Tim Benson (Rifkind Center, LA County Museum of Modern Art, editor of Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation 1910-1930)
More Information: Conference Folder [pdf].

The interest in much current critical debate in questions of national and transnational identities has helped restore and enliven the conception of modernism and the avant-garde as twin international formations across the arts. Magazines were instrumental in publicizing the new movements and frequently did so, singly or in the company of others, with an ambition to intervene in the public or international sphere.
The second conference of the Modernist Magazines Project invites proposals for papers which explore the role magazines have played in the broad networks of modernist art, ideas and politics in shaping and re-articulating regional, national, and cross-national identities. The conference will concentrate on but not be limited to the period 1880-1960 in Britain, Europe and the USA. Papers which fall outside these parameters but illuminate the conference themes are welcome.

The conference will be held at the University of Sussex from 15th to 17th July 2009. The deadline for the submission of proposals (200-250 words) is the 15th February 2009. Proposals for papers should be sent to: Christian Weikop(c.weikop@sussex.ac.uk), Dr Christian Weikop, School of Humanities, Arts B229 University of Sussex, Falmer Brighton BN1 9QN.

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).