Modernist Aesthetics in Transition

Deborah Ascher Barnstone is Professor and Head of Architecture at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is co-editor of the Visual Cultures and German Contexts series. Donna West Brett is Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is author of Photography and Place: Seeing and Not Seeing Germany After 1945 (2016); and co-editor with Natalya Lusty of Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images (2019).

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction1. Shadow Schein and Scherenschnitte: Lotte Reiniger and the Silhouettes of Early Weimar, Erin Maynes (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA)2. Cinema of the Underprivileged: Heinrich Zille’s Influence on Weimar Street Film, Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert (UCLA, USA)3. Moholy-Nagy: Shadows and Space-Time, Donna West Brett (The University of Sydney, Australia)4. Female Sexuality, Sex Research and the Visual Arts, Birgit Lang and Eliza Coyle (The University of Melbourne, Australia)5. In Pursuit of Beauty: Manassé and Erotic Photography in the Weimar and Nazi Eras, Camilla Smith (University of Birmingham, UK)6. Visual Diversity within Gleichschaltung? The Diffusion of ‘New Typography’ during the Interwar Period in Germany, Patrick Rössler (University of Erfurt, Germany)7. The Case of Color in 1920s and 1930s German Architecture, Deborah Ascher Barnstone (The University of Sydney, Australia)8. Altars to Ambition: The Triptych Revival in Late Weimar and National Socialist Germany, Peter Chametzky (University of South Carolina, USA)9. Cabaret in Transition: Ilse Bois’ Parodies Between the Times and Between the Genres, Mila Ganeva (Miami University, USA)10. The Case of Breker: Sculpture Reception, 1919 – 1943, Nina Lübbren (Anglia Ruskin University, UK)11. Flamboyantly Gay, Jewish and Avant-garde: Alfred Flecthheim’s Dealing with Transitional Aesthetics, Transsexualities and Antisemitism, Fae Brauer (University of East London Centre for Cultural Research, UK)Index

Uniting leading scholars in the Weimar avant-garde and Nazi modernism, this timely collection helps us better understand the continuities as much as the disruptions between the periods’ aesthetic styles and schools. Such precise analyses of celebrated works and forgotten resistance require us to challenge many long-held assumptions about artists caught in turbulent political times.