Utopia: The Avant-Garde, Modernism and (Im)possible Life

Description

Utopian hope and dystopian despair are characteristic features of modernism and the avant-garde. Readings of the avant-garde have frequently sought to identify utopian moments coded in its works and activities as optimistic signs of a possible future social life, or as the attempt to preserve hope against the closure of an emergent dystopian present.  The fourth volume of the EAM series, European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, casts light on the history, theory and actuality of the utopian and dystopian strands which run through European modernism and the avant-garde from the late 19th to the 21st century. The book’s varied and carefully selected contributions, written by experts from around 20 countries, seek to answer such questions as: ·  how have modernism and the avant-garde responded to historical circumstance in mapping the form of possible futures for humanity? ·  how have avant-garde and modernist works presented ideals of living as alternatives to the present? ·  how have avant-gardists acted with or against the state to remodel human life or to resist the instrumental reduction of life by administration and industrialisation? Contents About the Series – Sur la collection – Zur Buchreiheix Introduction New People of a New Life. Modernism, the Avant-Garde and the Aesthetics of Utopia Ideology and Aesthetics “Enemies of Utopia for the sake of its realisation”. Futurism, Surrealism, Situationism, and the Problem of Utopia World War I, Modernism and Minor Utopias Utopia through Art. Building Bridges and Curing Culture in War-Torn Europe Designing a Peaceful World in a Time of Conflict. The Dutch Writer Frederik van Eeden and His Mission as an Internationalist during World War Surrealism’s Utopian Cartographies. Off the Map? Utopian Failure and Function in Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen Language Writing’s Concrete Utopia. From Leningrad to Occupy Rationalism and Redemption Magnetic Modernism. František Kupka’s Mesmeric Abstraction and Anarcho-Cosmic Utopia Juan Gelman and the Development of a Utopian Poetics Utopie und Apokalypse in der österreichischen Kulturzeitschrift Der Brenner (1910–1954) Redemption, Utopia and the Avant-Garde. German-Jewish Visions of the Future From the “Transparent Stone Age” to the “Space of the Chalice-Cupola”. Perceptual Utopias in the Russian Avant-Garde (1910s–1960s) A la recherche d’une sonorité utopique. Sound Representations of Utopia in the Works of Russian Musicians in the First Three Decades of the 20th Century Utopian Dimensions in Pedro Cabrita Reis. A Melancholic Return to Modernist Paradigms? Primitivism, Photomontage, Ethnography. Utopian Fragments in Hannah Höch’s Aus einem ethnographischen Museum Experimentation and Urban Space A Paper Paradise. Ernst Bloch and the Crystal Chain A Retreat from Everyday Soviet Life. Konstantin Vaginov’s Utopian Visions Utopian Voyages. Robert and Sonia Delaunay’s Mural Schemes for the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris Deconstructing Constructivism in Post-Communist Hungary. László Rajk and the Na-Ne Gallery Guerrilla Art in the Streets of Athens. A Plan for Utopia in Action Communities and Education Utopian Futures and Imagined Pasts in the Ambivalent Modernism of the Kibbo Kift Kindred New York, Anarchism and Children’s Art Children’s Utopia / Fascist Utopia. An Analysis of Children’s Textbooks and Subjection under Fascism The Future in Modernism. C.K. Ogden’s To-Day and To-Morrow Book Series Escape from Utopia. The Metamorphoses of Utopian Dreams in the Russian Avant- Garde in Exile (Il’ya Zdanevich, Boris Poplavskii) Sexuality and Desire Erotic Utopia – Free Upbringing, Free Sex and Socialism. Wilhelm Reich’s Influence on Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen’s Danish Surrealism Faire jouir le système. Georges Bataille et l’utopie de l’impossible The Non-Oedipal Android. Towards a Surrealist Utopia in Postwar Romania From Collective Love to Nudism and the Naked City. Jens August Schade’s Utopian Eroticism between Surrealism, Situationism and Popular Culture The Undercut Utopian Worlds of the Russian Pierrot Dystopian Visions and Ideas of Death as a Transformation in Gilbert Clavel’s An Institute for Suicide List of Contributors Index Colour Illustrations