Visions of the human : art, World War I and the modernist subject / Tom Slevin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Slevin, Tom, author.

Series:

International library of modern and contemporary art ; 22.

ILMCA ; 22

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art, European--20th century.

Art, European.

Human figure in art.

Modernism (Art)--Europe.

Modernism (Art).

World War, 1914-1918--In art.

World War, 1914-1918.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (273 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Distribution:

[London, England] : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Other Title:

World War 1, and the modernist subject

World War One, and the modernist subject

Place of Publication:

London, England : I.B. Tauris, 2019.

Summary:

"In what ways do the artistic avant-garde's representations of the human body reflect the catastrophe of World War I? The European modernists were inspired by developments in the nineteenth-century, yielding new forms of knowledge about the nature of reality and repositioning the human body as the new 'object' of knowledge. New 'visions' of the human subject were created within this transformation. However, modernity's reactionary political climate - for which World War I provided a catalyst - transformed a once liberal ideal between humanity, environment, and technology, into a tool of disciplinary rationalisation. Visions of the Human considers the consequences of this historical moment for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It explores the ways in which the 'technologies of the self' that inspired the avant-garde were increasingly instrumentalised by conservative politics, urbanism, consumer capitalism and the society of 'the spectacle'. This is an engaging and powerful study which challenges prior ideas and explores new ways of thinking about modern visual culture."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

List of Illustrations

Introduction [4319] 6

Chapter One: New Visions of the Human [24974]

Introduction 21

Vision and Knowledge 26

Cultural Encoding 33

The 'Crisis of the Subject' 43

Cubist Perceptions 50

The Bionomic of Body and Environment 71

Cubism, Phenomena and Intersubjectivity 77

Chapter Two: The Simultaneous Subject [20862]

Introduction 90

Colour, Form, and Memory 99

Simultaneous Materiality 104

La Prose du Transsibérien 110

Vision and the Fourth Dimension 113

La Robe Simultanée 130

Chapter Three: Rationalised Existence [16555]

Introduction: Cubism After the War 142

The Cubist Rhizome 145

The European Avant-Garde 152

Oskar Schlemmer and Rationalised Cubism 155

Schlemmer's Bodies 161

Man in Space 168

The Figure of Reactionary Modernism 174

The Monumental Body 185

Chapter Four: Modernity's Vitruvian Bodies [9638]

Introduction: Vitruvian Men 190

Rudolph Laban's Icosahedron 197

The Kinesphere 203

Cybernetic Bodies 209

Le Corbusier, the Body, and the 'Mass Ornament' 215

The Geometry of Utopia 220

Le Modulor 235

Conclusion: From n-Dimensional Imagination to One Dimensional Man [9294]

239

[Total approx. 85000 words - exc. Bibliography & endnotes]

Endnotes 264

Bibliography 289.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780755603558

0755603559

9781786739964

1786739968

9780857738912

0857738917

OCLC:

1128165497