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Samuel Zipp sheds new light on the rise and fall of New York's urban renewal in the decades after World War II. Focusing on four iconic "Manhattan projects"--the United Nations building, Stuyvesant Town, Lincoln Center, and the great swaths of public housing in East Harlem--Zipp unearths a host of forgotten stories and characters that flesh out the conventional history of(...)
History since 1900, Reference Books
June 2010
Manhattan projects: The rise and fall of urban renewal in Cold War New York
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Samuel Zipp sheds new light on the rise and fall of New York's urban renewal in the decades after World War II. Focusing on four iconic "Manhattan projects"--the United Nations building, Stuyvesant Town, Lincoln Center, and the great swaths of public housing in East Harlem--Zipp unearths a host of forgotten stories and characters that flesh out the conventional history of urban renewal. He shows how boosters hoped to make Manhattan the capital of modernity and a symbol of American power, but even as the builders executed their plans, a chorus of critics revealed the dark side of those Cold War visions, attacking urban renewal for perpetuating deindustrialization, racial segregation, and class division; for uprooting thousands, and for implanting a new, alienating cityscape. Cold War-era urban renewal was not merely a failed planning ideal, Zipp concludes, but also a crucial phase in the transformation of New York into both a world city and one mired in urban crisis.
History since 1900, Reference Books
Dairy queens: The politics of pastoral architecture from Catherine De' Medici to Marie-Antoinette
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Meredith Martin tells the story of a royal and aristocratic building type that has been largely forgotten today: the pleasure dairy of early modern France. These garden structures—most famously the faux-rustic, white marble dairy built for Marie-Antoinette’s Hameau at Versailles—have long been dismissed as the trifling follies of a reckless elite. Martin challenges such(...)
Dairy queens: The politics of pastoral architecture from Catherine De' Medici to Marie-Antoinette
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Meredith Martin tells the story of a royal and aristocratic building type that has been largely forgotten today: the pleasure dairy of early modern France. These garden structures—most famously the faux-rustic, white marble dairy built for Marie-Antoinette’s Hameau at Versailles—have long been dismissed as the trifling follies of a reckless elite. Martin challenges such assumptions and reveals the pivotal role that pleasure dairies played in cultural and political life, especially with respect to polarizing debates about nobility, femininity, and domesticity. Together with other forms of pastoral architecture such as model farms and hermitages, pleasure dairies were crucial arenas for elite women to exercise and experiment with identity and power. Opening with Catherine de’ Medici’s lavish dairy at Fontainebleau, Martin’s book explores how French queens and noblewomen used pleasure dairies to naturalize their status, display their cultivated tastes, and proclaim their virtue as nurturing mothers and capable estate managers.
History until 1900, France
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From 2012 to 2014 a series of contemporary art exhibitions, events, and participatory forums organized by Galerija Nova, Tensta konsthall, and Grazer Kunstverein comprised the project “Beginning as Well as We Can (How Do We Talk about Fascism?).” Focusing on the startling increase of nationalism across Europe—made palpable in manifestations of fascist tendencies and the(...)
Art Theory
March 2015
Art and f word reflections on the browning of Europe
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From 2012 to 2014 a series of contemporary art exhibitions, events, and participatory forums organized by Galerija Nova, Tensta konsthall, and Grazer Kunstverein comprised the project “Beginning as Well as We Can (How Do We Talk about Fascism?).” Focusing on the startling increase of nationalism across Europe—made palpable in manifestations of fascist tendencies and the cult of heritage—the project points to the possibility and power of art to imagine futures that are not irrevocably determined by the present, but are invested with struggles fought here and now. Art and the F Word: Reflections on the Browning of Europe, edited by curator Maria Lind and the collective What, How & for Whom/WHW, continues the debate with contributions by cultural critics, curators, and artists, which articulate resistant and constructive possibilities of social and artistic production—investigating the language of politics and philosophy and also popular vocabularies, social contexts, media, science, and aesthetics.
Art Theory
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Like a journey into the heart of urban solitude and its periphery, Serge Clément’s work draws the viewer into an intimate relationship with the image. As the images accumulate, they create an imaginary density of timeless fragments. For Clément, photography has always been closely related to the book, particularly along the idea that an image refers to other images. On(...)
Contemporary Art Monographs
June 2015
Dépaysé
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Like a journey into the heart of urban solitude and its periphery, Serge Clément’s work draws the viewer into an intimate relationship with the image. As the images accumulate, they create an imaginary density of timeless fragments. For Clément, photography has always been closely related to the book, particularly along the idea that an image refers to other images. On one hand, it signifies that an image is a leaky container with smoke, fog, streams and rivers, reflections, and streets running across the image. On the other, Serge Clément constantly questions the power of the photographic image to capture reality. A certain street, a certain perspective, this deserted place, the passers-by are not tied to a clearly identifiable world, but belong to the abstract universe of an essentially imaginary city. It is not important to know whether the place in question is Montreal or Tokyo, the viewer may rather lose himself between several places.
Contemporary Art Monographs
Martha Rosler, Culture class
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In this collection of essays Martha Rosler embarks on a broad inquiry into the economic and historical precedents for today’s soft ideology of creativity, with special focus on its elaborate retooling of class distinctions. In the creative city, the neutralization or incorporation of subcultural movements, the organic translation of the gritty into the quaint, and the(...)
Critical Theory
September 2013
Martha Rosler, Culture class
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In this collection of essays Martha Rosler embarks on a broad inquiry into the economic and historical precedents for today’s soft ideology of creativity, with special focus on its elaborate retooling of class distinctions. In the creative city, the neutralization or incorporation of subcultural movements, the organic translation of the gritty into the quaint, and the professionalization of the artist combine with armies of eager freelancers and interns to constitute a new social sphere in which an elaborate retooling of traditional markers of difference has allowed class distinctions to be dissolved or willfully suppressed. The result is a handful of cities selected for revitalization rather than desertion, where artists in search of cheap rent become the avant-garde pioneers of gentrification. And it may be for this reason that, for Rosler, it becomes all the more necessary to locate the functioning of power within this new urban paradigm, to find a position from which to make it accountable to something other than its own logic.
Critical Theory
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"Making Modernism Soviet " provides a new understanding of the ideological engagement of Russian modern artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, and Vera Ermolaeva with the political and social agenda of the Bolsheviks in the chaotic years immediately following the Russian Revolution. Focusing on the relationship between power brokers and cultural(...)
Making modernism Soviet: the Russian avant-garde in the early Soviet era 1918-1928
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"Making Modernism Soviet " provides a new understanding of the ideological engagement of Russian modern artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, and Vera Ermolaeva with the political and social agenda of the Bolsheviks in the chaotic years immediately following the Russian Revolution. Focusing on the relationship between power brokers and cultural institutions under conditions of state patronage, Pamela Kachurin lays to rest the myth of the imposition of control from above upon a victimized artistic community. Drawing on extensive archival research, she shows that Russian modernists used their positions within the expanding Soviet arts bureaucracy to build up networks of like-minded colleagues. Their commitment to one another and to the task of creating a socially transformative visual language for the new Soviet context allowed them to produce some of their most famous works of art. But it also contributed to the "Sovietization" of the art world that eventually sealed their fate.
Current Exhibitions
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From Futurism to Fluxus, virtually every twentieth-century avant-garde produced art multiples of some kind, whether to defuse the auratic power of the unique artwork, or to foster a more democratic art culture. The Small Utopia provides a thorough overview of this tendency, looking at Malevich’s tea sets, Bauhaus textiles and toys, early audio multiples, Duchamp’s(...)
The small utopia : ars multiplicata
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From Futurism to Fluxus, virtually every twentieth-century avant-garde produced art multiples of some kind, whether to defuse the auratic power of the unique artwork, or to foster a more democratic art culture. The Small Utopia provides a thorough overview of this tendency, looking at Malevich’s tea sets, Bauhaus textiles and toys, early audio multiples, Duchamp’s readymades, films by Fischinger and Moholy-Nagy, Maciunas’ Fluxus kits, Minimalist and Pop art multiples, artist’s books and small press magazines, among other examples. The scholars who contributed to this volume include Maria Gough on Russian Productivism; Elena Gigli on Giacomo Balla; Annette Malochet on Sonia Delaunay’s Atelier Simultané; Karen Koehler on Bauhaus; Antonio Somaini on early sound art; Adina Kamien-Kazhdan on readymades; Marie Rebecchi on abstract cinema; Nicholas Fox Weber on Josef and Anni Albers; and Julia Robinson on Nouveau Realisme and Fluxus multiples. An illustrated chronology rounds out this essential and handsome publication.
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Archival power, silences, and absences profoundly shape and structure postcolonial landscapes, spaces, and urban environments by controlling bodies, histories, and interactions. This book explores pathways to dismantle these imperial entanglements by developing methodologies and plural epistemologies through an interdisciplinary dialog between history, memory politics,(...)
Architecture ecologies
January 2024
Unearthing traces: dismantling imperialist entanglements of archives, landscapes, and the built environment
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Archival power, silences, and absences profoundly shape and structure postcolonial landscapes, spaces, and urban environments by controlling bodies, histories, and interactions. This book explores pathways to dismantle these imperial entanglements by developing methodologies and plural epistemologies through an interdisciplinary dialog between history, memory politics, critical theory, and archival practice together with the fields of the built environment, landscape, urban studies, architecture, and the arts. Unearthing traces catalyzes critical discussions that not only challenge the objectivity and dismantle the neutrality surrounding current archival practices and archival institutions, but also question what constitutes the archive itself. The book unearths potential histories and minor narratives buried by the imperial production of pasts and silences. The diverse range of contributions in the book offers original research, discussions, positions, and tools and provides a critical resource for scholars, architects, artists, activists, and archivists who want to engage with landscapes and built environments in a critical and postcolonial perspective in relation to archival materials and practices.
Architecture ecologies
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Woodcutter, painter, cosmopolitan and anti-militarist, Belgium-born Masereel (1889-1972) was an extremely popular artist in 1920s Germany. A contemporary of Kathe Kollwitz and George Grosz, his "novels-without-words"--completely composed of woodcuts--have been neglected in the States. Here, 165 striking woodcuts generate the visual narrative of a young man's initiation(...)
Passionate journey: A vision in woodcut
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Woodcutter, painter, cosmopolitan and anti-militarist, Belgium-born Masereel (1889-1972) was an extremely popular artist in 1920s Germany. A contemporary of Kathe Kollwitz and George Grosz, his "novels-without-words"--completely composed of woodcuts--have been neglected in the States. Here, 165 striking woodcuts generate the visual narrative of a young man's initiation into the urban milieu. The raw power and diversity of the city's day to day events continually expand his understanding of life's possibilities. The hero's fascination with the city's abundance of art and culture, political debate and industrial glory combine with observations on an equal profusion of poignant social trauma. The protagonist travels to distant lands; this journey of vibrant percipience propels him toward an enlarged comprehension of his role in a world of good and evil, love and tenderness and clashing social interests. Mann's effusive introduction discusses Masereel's life and influences and details the ideas that motivated and enliven this vivid work.
Illustration
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Only a few decades ago, Dubai was merely a tranquil Bedouin city. Today, the skyline of a boomtown rises from the desert. Reports about it are distinguished by superlatives. In particular, reports regardign new buildings in this country of little shadow overshadow anything that has been constructed before. Burj Al Arab, currently the world's largest luxury hotel, with its(...)
Dubai : Architecture & design
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Only a few decades ago, Dubai was merely a tranquil Bedouin city. Today, the skyline of a boomtown rises from the desert. Reports about it are distinguished by superlatives. In particular, reports regardign new buildings in this country of little shadow overshadow anything that has been constructed before. Burj Al Arab, currently the world's largest luxury hotel, with its also technically unique facade is just one example of these buildings. Palm Project or Hydropolis, both visionary, artificially created islands belong to the same category. As does the construction of the world's highest apartment tower. Dubai presents a kind of preview of the ultramodern - a trend that is also reflected in the design of various restaurants, hotels and label stores. Representing the most important gate to the Middle East, this city is primarily one thing: thoroghly international and with incredible power on its way to a new future. This is the theme of this book, with chosen objects and crucial information concerning them.
books
February 2007
Arch Southwest Asia & North Africa