Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Stavrinaki, Maria

Titel

Entre ciel et terre: l'oeuvre d'art totale dans les utopies expressionnistes [Between sky and earth: the total art work in Expressionist utopias]

Ist Teil von

• Cahiers du Musée National d'Art Moderne (France), 2002-06 (80), p.80-106

Erscheinungsjahr

2002

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Examines the utopian concept of the total art work associated with German Expressionism during the years 1918-21. The author interrogates the purposes of the progressive artists groups that rallied around the socialist cause in Nov. 1918, and exposes the main tenets of their revolutionary ethics, commenting on the underlying notion of cosmic unity and the allied conception of building as a unifying activity leading to a renewed spiritual order, with reference to the writings of Bruno Taut, Adolf Behne, Walter Gropius, and others. She considers Taut's utopian projects for theatre halls, contrasting his reliance on coloured glass with the more enveloping designs of Hans Poelzig, and analyses in detail the synaesthetic and other ideas developed in the 28 annotated sketches of Behne's Der Weltbaumeister (Hagen, Germany: Folkwang Verlag, 1920), partly inspired by Gustav Theodor Fechner s book Petit Livre de la Vie Après la Mort (1836). She concludes by exploring the synthetic functions of the Kristallhaus included in Taut's Stadtkrone (Jena, Germany: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1919) and Alpine Architektur< /i> (Hagen, Germany: Folkwang Verlag, 1919), and of the later Haus der Himmel (1920; illus.).