Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Stavrinaki, Maria

Titel

Dieu, l'art et le travail dans l'Allemagne des années 1920 [God, art and labour in Germany in the 1920s]

Ist Teil von

• Cahiers du Musée National d'Art Moderne (France), 2003-12 (86), p.60-81

Erscheinungsjahr

2003

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Studies the relationship between art, labour and religion in Germany in the early 1920s with reference to two publications: the book Alpine Architektur by the German architect Bruno Taut, which appeared shortly after the Nov. 1918 revolution, and an article by the German critic Adolf Behne entitled `Kunst, Handwerk, Technik , printed in Die Neue Rundschau in 1922. The author explains that Alpine Architektur (1919; illus.), which contains sketches of utopian crystalline structures to be erected on the summits of the Alps, was written during the War, and analyses the subtext behind its call for communal engagement in a `grand task that would bridge the gap between artists and workers and so foster a new community, probing the sources of Taut's pantheist and socialist concerns. She outlines Behne's career, maps the background to this text written after hopes for a socialist revolution in Germany had collapsed, and opposes its stance, fuelled by, among others, Taylorism and the ideas of Piet Mondrian, towards the `transcendental Expressionism of Taut's utopia. She concludes with a brief discussion of Siegfried Kracauer's essay `L ornement de la masse (1927).