One of the goals of Modernism was the presentation of the essence of art, or pure form. Encouraged by theorists, modern artists found pure form in ornament which, though promising, was sullied by connotations of materiality, domesticity, and femininity. Jenny Anger demonstrates that the decorative significantly informed Paul Klee's art. She compares his work to that of another major modernist, Henri Matisse, to confirm the critical role of the decorative in Modernism. Anger also explores the relevance of the decorative for contemporary and, especially, women artists.

Paul Klee and the Decorative in Modern Art

Arts & Photography

Anger, Jenny

History & Criticism

Cambridge University Press

Four Metaphors of Modernism: From Der Sturm to the Société Anonyme

Exploring the significance of metaphor in modern art “Where do the roots of art lie?” asked Der Sturm founder Herwarth Walden. “In the people? Behind the mountains? Behind the planets. He who has eyes to hear, feels.” Walden’s Der Sturm—the journal, gallery, performance venue, press, theater, bookstore, and art school in Berlin (1910–1932)—has never before been the subject of a book-length study in English. Four Metaphors of Modernism positions Der Sturm at the center of the avant-garde and as an integral part of Euro-American modern art, theory, and practice.
Jenny Anger traces Walden’s aesthetic and intellectual roots to Franz Liszt and Friedrich Nietzsche—forebears who led him to embrace a literal and figurative mixing of the arts. She then places Der Sturm in conversation with New York’s Société Anonyme (1920–1950), an American avant-garde group modeled on Der Sturm and founded by Katherine Sophie Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray. Working against the tendency to examine artworks and artist groups in isolation, Anger underscores the significance of both organizations to the development and circulation of international modernism. 
Focusing on the recurring metaphors of piano, glass, water, and home, Four Metaphors of Modernism interweaves a historical analysis of these two prominent organizations with an aesthetic analysis of the metaphors that shaped their practices, reconceiving modernism itself. Presented here is a modernism that is embodied, gendered, multisensory, and deeply committed to metaphor and a restoration of abstraction’s connection with the real.

Univ. of Minnesota Press

Paul Klee was a leading figure in European Modernism, and his acclaim at home was quickly matched in the United States, where both private collectors and major museums sought out his work. Klee and America explores the reasons for that enthusiastic reception, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, while the artist was being targeted in Hitler's campaign against Entartete Kunst (degenerate art). Just as the European market for Klee's work was collapsing, American patrons and curators were gobbling it up. And after he had been removed from his teaching post in Dsseldorf and had returned to his childhood home in Switzerland, Klee continued to be represented by a number of German-Jewish art dealers who had emigrated to the U.S. Eventually his work landed in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, among others. Foremost among Klee's earliest American collectors was Katherine Dreier, whose Societe Anonyme, founded with artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, sponsored the exhibitions of pioneering abstract art in which his paintings were first shown in America. In Los Angeles, Walter and Louise Arensberg assembled a vast collection of Klee's paintings. In 1939, Alfred Barr Jr. bought a first canvas for MoMA. Klee and America examines this history and offers an impressive selection of Klee's finest "American" works, both paintings and drawings.

Klee and America

Barnett, Vivian Endicott

Reference

Hatje Cantz Publishers

Josef Albers (1888-1976) was a highly influential painter, color theorist and teacher--a monumental figure in international postwar art and aesthetics; his wife and artistic equal, Anni Albers (1899-1994), created important textile artworks as well as spare and abstract paintings and drawings. Together, their artistic roots can be traced to the time they shared at the Bauhaus in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. After immigrating to the United States in 1933, the couple traveled regularly to Mexico and South America to study the art, architecture and textile designs of pre-Columbian cultures. Featuring previously unseen letters, manuscripts and photographs by the artists, as well as lush color plates of their artworks, this catalogue is the first to document the influence of Central and South America on the Albers' work. It also makes the case that their art, as we know it today, cannot be understood without acknowledging their pivotal encounters in Latin America, for Anni's weavings, drawings and painted studies demonstrate her deep knowledge of pre-Colombian textiles, and Josef's paintings and photographs testify to the development of his unique sense of color in Mexico, as well as the formation of his independent concepts of photography and Formalism. One particularly stunning chapter, Hommage to the Pyramid includes Josef Albers' photographic collages of South American Meso-American pyramids. The abstract, graphic quality of these images refers directly and surprisingly to both artists' paintings and textiles.

Anni and Josef Albers: Latin American Journeys

Gilderhus, Kiki

Hatje Cantz

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