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modernism

Wilhelm Grosz: The Red Sails of Forced Migration

June 16, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Wilhelm Grosz towards the end of his life courtesy The Wilhelm Grosz EstateOne of the top-grossing American films of 1940 was the western Santa Fe Trail, the seventh Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland collaboration. The story concerns John Brown’s campaign against slavery just before the outbreak of the Civil War. Starting out on an acting career, young Ronald Reagan appeared in the story line as George Armstrong Custer. [Read more…] about Wilhelm Grosz: The Red Sails of Forced Migration

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Black History, Cultural History, Dance, Film History, German-American History, Jazz, Jewish History, modernism, Music, Musical History, New York City, Opera, Performing Arts, Poetry, Queens, Theatre, Vice

Railroads, The Spuyten Duyvil Disaster & Faustian Legend

June 9, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Replica of the DeWitt ClintonOn September 27th, 2025, it will be two hundred years ago that the world’s first public railway, known as the Stockton & Darlington (S&DR), was opened in north-east England.

As well as carrying coal, the train offered space for six hundred passengers, most of them traveling in wagons, but some distinguished guests were allocated a seat in a specially designed carriage called The Experiment. [Read more…] about Railroads, The Spuyten Duyvil Disaster & Faustian Legend

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Cultural History, Harlem, Harlem River, Hudson River, Hudson River Railroad, Literature, modernism, New York Central RR, New York City, railroads, Spuyten Duyvil, The Bronx, Transportation History

Architect Adolf Loos and the American Legacy in Vienna

May 22, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Golden Arch at Louis Sullivan’s Transportation Building at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition A chronology of cultural interactions between Europe and the United States tends to be a narrative about identity formation. It concerns the transfer of the American artist from a pilgrim to the shrines of European achievement to an active participant in redefining the boundaries of art and literature.

European modernism was the spontaneous expression of gifted but rebellious youngsters. It was rooted in urban settings and the post-war influx of young American writers fleeing the puritanical spirit at home added energy to the avant-garde. The presence of African-American performers and musicians boosted the raucous mood amongst the cosmopolitan mix of artists in Paris and Berlin.

Modernism had started with joyful artistic irreverence, it suffered in the trenches and, under the repression of the 1930s, was forced to seek asylum in New York. As war in Europe became inevitable, most cultural exiles returned to America, bringing with them a bounty of experience to fructify the cultural landscape at home (the term “lost generation” is a misnomer).

Such an account however obscures the fact that young and curious visitors to the United States – unlike their elders who resented the prospect of “Americanization” – returned home inspired by what they had experienced whilst questioning Europe’s haughty pretension of cultural superiority. [Read more…] about Architect Adolf Loos and the American Legacy in Vienna

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Architecture, Art History, Chicago, Cultural History, German-American History, Jewish History, modernism, Urban History, World War Two

George Deem, Bulldozers and Stalinist Suppression

April 11, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

George DeemManhattan artist George Deem is remembered for referencing the history of painting by re-imagining Old Masters in a contemporary context. He re-configured iconic pictorial images through visual ploys such as repetition and erasure, or through the addition of components of contemporary life and art. [Read more…] about George Deem, Bulldozers and Stalinist Suppression

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Chicago, Cultural History, Literature, Long Island, Manhattan, Metropolitan Museum of Art, modernism, New York City, painting, Russian History, Writing

The Black Cyclone & The Unbearable Whiteness of Cycling

February 7, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

Annie Cohen Kopchovsky with her Londonderry-sponsored bikeThe invention of the wheel has been celebrated as a hallmark of man’s drive for innovation. By the 1890s, Europe and America were obsessed with the bicycle. The new two-wheel technology had a profound effect on social interactions. It supplied the pedal power to freedom for (mainly white) women and created an opportunity for one of the first black sporting heroes.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, bicycle racing as a sporting event reached feverish popularity both amongst the public and within artistic circles. In the early twentieth century racing developed as a distinct facet of modernity. The bicycle was the pre-eminent vehicle of the avant-garde. [Read more…] about The Black Cyclone & The Unbearable Whiteness of Cycling

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City, Recreation Tagged With: Art History, bicycling, Black History, Cultural History, French History, German-American History, Literature, modernism, New Hampshire, Sports History, Suffrage Movement, womens history

The Cake Walk, Prohibition & John Philip Sousa: Ragtime Wild Paris

November 14, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Daniel Chester French, bronze statue of George Washington at Place d’Iéna, Paris, 1900One of the effects of colonial expansion in the nineteenth century was that museums stopped being exclusively Euro-centered. The mapping of the annexed world was a responsibility of colonial governments which employed scholars to carry out the tasks of collecting and recording. Curators changed their collecting focus.

Works of art from Africa and Pacific Oceania that were looted, stolen or cheaply acquired without concern about provenance, found their way from British, French, Dutch, and Belgian colonial territories to the museums and curiosity shops of Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Brussels. [Read more…] about The Cake Walk, Prohibition & John Philip Sousa: Ragtime Wild Paris

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: 1870 Franco-Prussian War, Cultural History, Dance, French History, Harlem, Harlem Renaissance, Jazz, modernism, Musical History, Performing Arts, Prohibition

Nancy Cunard, Modernism and the Private Press Movement

September 29, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

The Kelmscott ChaucerThe history of the modern private press can be said to have started in early 1891 with William Morris’s foundation of the Kelmscott Press at 16 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, and the publication of his own work The Story of the Glittering Plain.

There had been forerunners of course. Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill Press, established in June 1757, set a precedent by producing splendid books, pamphlets, and ephemera, but it was Morris who succeeded in establishing a cost-effective press for high quality publications. His initiative gave birth to a host of similar undertakings. He initiated the Private Press Movement which was closely associated with the rise of modernist ideas. Morris also had a remarkable following in New York. [Read more…] about Nancy Cunard, Modernism and the Private Press Movement

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Black History, Cultural History, Folk Art, French History, Literature, modernism, Photography, Publishing, sculpture, womens history

Modernist Architecture, Literature, and the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium

September 12, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 2 Comments

First page of an 1887 BrochureEdward Livingston Trudeau was born in 1848 in New York City to a family of physicians. During his late teens, his elder brother James contracted tuberculosis (TB) and Edward nursed him until his death three months later. At twenty, he enrolled in the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia College (now Columbia University), completing his medical training in 1871. Two years later, he was diagnosed with TB too.

Following current climate-therapeutic theories that promoted the relocation of patients to regions with atmospheric conditions favorable to recuperation, he moved to the Adirondack Mountains. Seeking as much open air as he possible could, almost continuously living outside, he subsequently regained his health. In 1876 he settled in Saranac Lake and established a small medical practice. It was the beginning of a remarkable career and a new chapter in American medical history. [Read more…] about Modernist Architecture, Literature, and the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium

Filed Under: Adirondacks & NNY, History Tagged With: Adirondacks, Architecture, Cultural History, Housing, Literature, Medical History, modernism, Saranac Lake, tuberculosis

Carnage at Carnegie Hall

August 23, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Una serata futurista a MilanoOn October 4th 1923 a concert took place in Paris at which there were performances of Airplane sonata (1921), Sonata sauvage (1922/3), and Mechanisms (1923).

The composer was a young man from Trenton, New Jersey. Among his supporters were Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud, and James Joyce. The recital broke up in a riot. To modernists in the audience such disturbances justified their artistic experimentation. [Read more…] about Carnage at Carnegie Hall

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Carnegie Hall, Cultural History, modernism, Music, Musical History, New York City, Opera, Performing Arts, Theatre

Modernist Misogyny & Lady Penrose of Poughkeepsie

June 29, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

Vogue cover March 15 1927Elizabeth “Lee” Miller started her career in the fashion industry. Having been model and assistant to surrealist artist and photographer Emmanuel Radnitzky, better known as Man Ray, she had the drive and talent to pursue her own professional ambition. During the Second World War, she was one of five accredited female photo-journalists accompanying American troops.

In a turbulent life traumatic events in her youth and maturity took their toll and may have hampered the appreciation of her contribution. Full recognition of the artistic value of her work is long overdue. [Read more…] about Modernist Misogyny & Lady Penrose of Poughkeepsie

Filed Under: History, Hudson Valley - Catskills, New York City Tagged With: art, Art History, Cultural History, Fashion History, Manhattan, modernism, New York City, Photography, Poughkeepsie, womens history, World War Two

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