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

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.

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 (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

Mario Bellusi - 'Modern Traffic in Acient Rome' - 1930

 “The dynamic form, for its changeable and evolving essence, is a sort of invisible nimbus between an object and an action, between relative motion and absolute motion, between the visible and the invisible, between the object and its own indivisible setting. It is a kind of analogical synthesis dwelling on the borders between the real object and its plastic-ideal power and can only be grased by flashes of intuition.” -  Pittura scultura futuriste by Boccioni 1912/1913

Mario Bellusi, Modern Traffic in Acient Rome’ (Traffico moderno nell’antica Roma), 1930. Photomontage, gelatine silver print, 15 x 20 cm. Collection: Rovereto, MART, Archivio del ’900, Fondo Mino Somenzi.

A Man Ray Version of Man Ray, 1960

“Accordingly the artist’s work is to be measured by the vitality, the invention, and the definiteness

 and conviction of purpose within its own medium.” – Man Ray, ‘Statement’, NY 1916

 

Photo ‘A Man Ray Version of Man Ray, 1960’ – Collection Imogen Cunningham Trust