Thursday, 27 October 2016

Walter Gropius 'Bauhaus Building', Dessau - 1925


“The idea is rising of a universal unity in which all opposing forces exist in a state of absolute balance. This dawning recognition of the essential oneness of all things and their appearances endows creative effort with a fundamental inner meaning.” - Walter Gropius (1883-1969) ‘The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus’


Bauhaus Building, Dessau, 1925/1926 - Workshop wing, view from southwest [architect- Walter Gropius], c. 1926 Gelatin silver print mounted to cream wove paper image 11.5 x 16.1 cm  – source: the charnel house / unidentified photographer

Thursday, 20 October 2016

Postmodernism

postmodernism
"The only cure against Postmodernism is the incurable disease of Romanticism."
– quote ‘Pomo for beginners’ by R. Appignanesi and C. Garratt, 1995

"Postmodernism as thus conceived is not immediatlely a new form of the practice of art, but rather a critical redirection of tradition on the basis of a revised understanding of the immediate past." - Ideas of the Posmodern by C. Harrison & P. Wood, 1992 Cambridge, Massachusetts USA.

Tuesday, 18 October 2016

Maria Blanchard - 'Man with guitar' 1918

"Yet it does not matter who is exempted from this crisis, so long as cubism is not. For cubism is still the only vital style of our time, the one best able to convey contemporary feeling, and the only one capable of supporting a tradition which will survive into the future and form new artists." "The great art style of any period is that which relates itself to the true insights of its time." - Clement Greenberg 'The Decline of Cubism', Partisan Review NY 1948.

Maria Blanchard Man with guitar 1918

Maria Blanchard (Santander, Spain 1881 - Paris, France 1932) >
‘L’homme à la guitare’ 1918 - OOC, Kröller Müller colletion, Otterlo NL

“The painter will regard the untouched canvas as an area where she/he can post constructions of the mind.” - Introduction to contemporary painting (Cubism and Abstract Art) by H.Casteur & A .Smeets, 1959