The Cobra Movement In Postwar Europe

This book examines the art of Cobra, a network of poets and artists from Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam (1948–1951). Although the name stood for the organizers’ home cities, the Cobra artists hailed from countries in Europe, Africa, and the United States. This book investigates how a group of struggling young artists attempted to reinvent the international avant-garde after the devastation of the Second World War, to create artistic experiments capable of facing the challenges of postwar society. It explores how Cobra’s experimental, often collective art works and publications relate to broader debates in Europe about the use of images to commemorate violent events, the possibility of free expression in an art world constrained by Cold War politics, the breakdown of primitivism in an era of colonial independence movements, and the importance of spontaneity in a society increasingly dominated by the mass media. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, 20th-century modern art, avant-garde arts, and European history.

This definitive book on the renowned postwar avant-garde artistic movement offers a comprehensive insight into Cobra's history and achievements, and explores its lasting influences on contemporary art. The European artistic collective known as Cobra was born in the wake of World War II's devastating events, its name an acronym for the native cities of its founders: Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Brussels. The influential group of painters and sculptors had a tremendous impact on the development of European Abstract Expressionism, and contemporary art in general. Cobra was arguably the last avant-garde movement of the 20th century. Moving chronologically, this book explores the years leading up to Cobra's formation, charts its complex expansion over a decade, and illuminates how the movement helped shape the trajectory of contemporary art today. Thoughtfully integrated among the numerous images, many presented as full-page color illustrations, are essays that probe the ideological hallmarks that shaped the group as a whole: its rejection of rational constraints; a focus on play and youthfulness; and its embrace of immediacy, particularly in the form of action paintings. In addition, comprehensive biographies of the artists illuminate crucial aspects of each individual's journey, helping to expand readers' understanding of Europe's socio-political and theoretical climate.

This book maps key moments in the history of postwar art from a global perspective. The reader is introduced to a new globally oriented approach to art, artists, museums and movements of the postwar era (1945–70). Specifically, this book bridges the gap between historical artistic centers, such as Paris and New York, and peripheral loci. Through case studies, previously unknown networks, circulations, divides and controversies are brought to light. From the development of Ethiopian modernism, to the showcase of Brazilian modernity, this book provides readers with a new set of coordinates and a reassessment of well-trodden art historical narratives around modernism. This book will be of interest to scholars in art historiography, art history, exhibition and curatorial studies, modern art and globalization.

A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950 is the first work to consider all the arts and to discuss the role of the avant-garde not only in aesthetic terms but in its cultural and political context.

Lennon and McCartney: Painting with Sound explores the work of two of the most influential composers of the twentieth century. Five decades after the breakup of the Beatles, the music of John Lennon and Paul McCartney continues to fascinate and inspire. Evidence suggests that their uniquely eclectic approach can be traced back to the Liverpool College of Art. Following on that idea, this book explores the creative dialogue between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, both with the Beatles and on their own, that grew out of that early influence. The book is presented in three sections: I. Stretching the Canvas considers the Liverpool College of Art as the backdrop for John and Paul’s early collaborations with painter and musician Stuart Sutcliffe. This is followed by discussions of select works created by the Beatles between 1962-69. II. Extending the Space focuses on the long-distance creative dialogue between Lennon and McCartney as demonstrated in their respective solo recordings of the 1970s. III. New Colours considers the final works of the Lennon and McCartney creative dialogue as well as various McCartney solo projects released in the years that followed Lennon’s death in 1980. Here, the focus is on Paul’s development as a painter, its effect on his creativity, and his subsequent efforts to establish the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts as a world-class arts conservatory.

This transnational volume examines innovative women artists who were from, or worked in, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sápmi, and Sweden from the emergence of modernism until the feminist movement took shape in the 1960s. The book addresses the culturally specific conditions that shaped Nordic artists’ contributions, brings the latest methodological and feminist approaches to bear on Nordic art history, and engages a wide international audience through the contributors’ subject matter and analysis. Rather than introducing a new history of "rediscovered" women artists, the book is more concerned with understanding the mechanisms and structures that affected women artists and their work, while suggesting alternative ways of constructing women’s art histories. Artists covered include Else Alfelt, Pia Arke, Franciska Clausen, Jessie Kleemann, Hilma af Klint, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, Greta Knutson, Aase Texmon Rygh, Hannah Ryggen, Júlíana Sveinsdóttir, Ellen Thesleff, and Astri Aasen. The target audience includes scholars working in art history, cultural studies, feminist studies, gender studies, curatorial studies, Nordic studies, postcolonial studies, and visual studies.

The book "Rethinking Postwar Europe" offers an in-depth insight into the largely unexplored topic of artistic practices in the 1940s and 1950s in Europe which until recently had been obscured by ideologies of the Cold War. Thanks to the authors' diverse methodological backgrounds, the volume presents – for the first time – a comprehensive multilayered narrative, focusing on the complexities and entanglements in the artistic field. Instead of assessing the postwar period in the traditional way as divided by the Iron Curtain, the contributions investigate processes of contact, interaction, dissemination, overlapping, and networking. Consequently, the analysis of a diversified European modernism in both its aesthetic and its socio-political dimension resonates with all the different case studies. In particular, the volume looks at how artists developed, designed and (re)negotiated identities and discourses, and sheds new light on the power of art – and creative powers in general – in a postwar setting of mutilations, losses, and devastations.

The pioneering artists of the post-World War II era embraced artistic freedom and gesture-based styles, nontraditional materials and countercultural references. French art critic Michel Tapié even declared the existence of "un art autre" (art of another kind)--an art that entailed a radical break with all traditional notions of order and composition, in a movement toward something wholly "other." This catalogue accompanies the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum exhibition Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949-1960, which especially highlights works that entered into the collection during the tenure of then-director James Johnson Sweeney. Featuring nearly 100 works by Carla Accardi, Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Martin Barré, Harry Bertoia, Louise Bourgeois, Alberto Burri, Sam Francis, Grace Hartigan, Asger Jorn, Yves Klein, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Conrad Marca-Relli, Kenzo Okada, Jorge Oteiza, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Pierre Soulages, Clyfford Still, Antoni Tàpies, Jean Tinguely, Cy Twombly, Takeo Yamaguchi and Zao Wou-Ki, among others, this collection-based exhibition and publication explore the affinities and differences between artists working continents apart, in a period of great transition and rapid creative development. The fully illustrated exhibition catalogue includes essays by Tracey Bashkoff, Megan M. Fontanella and Joan Marter; an illustrated chronology; and short biographies of the artists.

The Surrealist Movement is an international intellectual movement that has led a sustained questioning of the basis of human experience under twentieth- and twenty-first century modernity since its founding in the early 1920s. Influenced by the psychoanalytical teachings of Sigmund Freud, Surrealism emerged among the generation that had witnessed the insanity and horror of the First World War, and was conceived of as a framework for investigating the little-understood phenomena of dreams and the unconscious. In these territories the surrealists recognized an alternative axis of human experience that did not align with the rational, workaday rhythms of modern life, and which instead revealed the extent to which individual subjectivity had been constrained by post-Enlightenment rationalism and by the economic forces governing the post-industrial world. Against these trends, the Surrealist Movement has sought to re-evaluate the foundations of modern society and reassert the primacy of the imagination for almost a century to-date. This book offers focused introductions to numerous writers, poets, artists, filmmakers, precursors, groups, movements, events, concepts, cultures, nations and publications connected to Surrealism, providing orientation for students and casual readers alike. Historical Dictionary of Surrealism, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries on the Surrealist Movement’s engagement with the realms of politics, philosophy, science, poetry, art and cinema, and charts the international surrealist community’s diverse explorations of specific thematic territories such as magic, occultism, mythology, eroticism and gothicism. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about surrealism.