Architecture Subject Overview
Modernist architecture and design represented a utopian vision of how the built environment could be adapted to the needs to modern industrial society. Industrialization had…
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Evolutionism
Evolutionism refers to the notion that basic life forms increase in complexity over time due to environmental adaptation. While commonly attributed to Charles Darwin (1809–1882),…
Kaprow, Allan (1927–2006)
Allan Kaprow was an American artist whose oeuvre included painting, assemblage, and “environments.” He is best known as the originator of “happenings,” a term he…
Zweig, Stefan (1881–1942)
Stefan Zweig was a prominent Austrian-Jewish novelist, playwright and journalist throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Growing up in a Viennese upper-class environment of assimilated Jewry,…
Modernism in Latin America
In Latin American intellectual history, modernism is a term that can be usefully and accurately applied to at least two distinct intellectual movements: a clearly…
Modernism in East Asia
The term ‘modernism’ is commonly used to describe some of the literary and cultural production of the early twentieth century in China, Japan, and Korea,…
Modernism in Europe
We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every…
Cubism [REVISED AND EXPANDED]
Cubism is an art movement that emerged in Paris during the first decade of the 20th century. It was a key movement in the birth…
Constructivism
Prior to World War II, Constructivism attracted little interest from British artists apart from the few involved with Circle in 1937. Circle consisted of a…
Photography
Kurokawa, Kishō [黒川紀章] (1934–2007)
Kishō Kurokawa [黒川紀章] was born in 1934 in Kanie, Aichi prefecture, Japan, and studied architecture at Kyoto University, obtaining his bachelor’s degree in architecture in…
Solanas, Fernando (1936--)
Fernando “Pino” Solanas is an Argentinian director, screenwriter, author, politician, and public intellectual. Alongside Octavio Getino, Solanas is a founder of the Third Cinema political…
Sanabria, Tomás José (1922–2008)
Sanabria is a representative figure of the second generation of 20th-century Venezuelan architects. He studied in the United States of America after World War II…
Lowry, Laurence Stephen (1887–1976)
L. S. Lowry was a modern British artist celebrated for his depictions of Salford and Manchester. As well as making portraits, landscapes, and seascapes, he…
Rivers, W. H. R. (1864–1922)
A pre-eminent British neurologist, psychologist, ethnologist and anthropologist, William Halse Rivers Rivers worked as a psychiatrist in British military hospitals, most famously Craiglockhart War Hospital…
Dalman, Elizabeth Cameron (1934--)
In a career that has spanned over sixty years, Elizabeth Cameron Dalman has been shaped by a politically progressive view of the role of dance…
Jeffers, (John) Robinson (1887–1962)
Renowned as the ‘poet of Carmel-Sur’, Robinson Jeffers held a place of prominence in American literature from the mid-1920s through to the 1930s. He lived…
Lange, Dorothea (1895–1965)
Dorothea Lange is best known as a documentary photographer for the United States Department of Agriculture’s Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration) during the…
Leonov, Leonid Maksimovich (1899–1994)
Loenid Maksimovich Leonov was a Russian prose writer and playwright. Born in Moscow, Leonov volunteered as a soldier and journalist in the Red Army during…
Drysdale, Russell (1912–1981)
Russell Drysdale was an Australian artist who created an original vision of the Australian landscape from the 1940s to the 1960s, portraying the emptiness and…
JunYee (1942--)
Junyee, or Luis Yee, Jr., is a Filipino artist known for his large-scale and site-specific art installations, which reflect a deep awareness of ecology and…
Atget, Jean Eugène Auguste (1857–1927)
Eugène Atget employed one of the defining instruments of modernity—the camera—to produce a comprehensive photographic record of what modern city planning was about to destroy:…
Adivasi Writing
Adivasi writing is something of a contradiction in terms: the literary traditions of adivasis (an umbrella term that designates original inhabitants, indigenous peoples, and tribal…
Delaunay, Sonia (1885–1979)
Sonia Delaunay, lately often referred to as Delaunay-Terk, was a painter and textile designer who, together with her husband Robert Delaunay, was the precursor of…
Simmel, Georg (1858–1918)
A foundational figure in sociology and social theory, Georg Simmel developed a methodology for analyzing modernity by tracing Capitalism’s disorienting effects on social relations, aesthetics,…