Results by title
73 books match the query 'Modern (late 19th Century to 1945)' and 6 start with e
Easy Living
The Rise of the Home OfficeElizabeth A Patton
Rutgers University Press, 2020
Eiffel Tower Confidential
What It Meant and What It Stands ForHollis Clayson
University of Chicago Press, 2027
A revelatory behind-the-scenes look at a universally recognized landmark: the Eiffel Tower.
The Eiffel Tower is widely photographed, visited, and written about, but it holds a wealth of stories that are rarely told. When it was built, the three-hundred-meter structure was the tallest on earth, but it bore little resemblance to the stripped-down, modernized monument that is known and loved today. With Eiffel Tower Confidential, art historian Hollis Clayson makes this familiar landmark strange again, offering expert insight into the life of the Tower.
Here she traces the creative financing of the Tower before its construction began, shares images made in its early years, and illuminates the role the Tower played in celebrating French Imperialism. She tells the fascinating story of iron ornamentation that helped the Tower win approval as the centerpiece of the 1889 Universal Exposition but was ripped off and discarded in 1937, and she investigates the sinister backstory behind how the dazzling illumination of the Tower—which combined 10,000 gas lights in glass globes, two kinds of electric spotlights placed at the summit, and Bengal flames on the platforms—was designed to function as an instrument of surveillance.
This extraordinary account takes us into the long shadow of the Eiffel Tower, inviting readers to get to know this acclaimed landmark on an unprecedented level.
El Lissitzky on Paper
Print Culture, Architecture, Politics, 1919–1933Samuel Johnson
University of Chicago Press, 2024
Russian artist El Lissitzky’s work spans painting, photography, theatrical and exhibition design, architecture, graphic design, typography, and literature. He was active in the Jewish cultural renaissance, formed an artists’ collective with Kazimir Malevich, was a key figure in the dissemination of early Soviet art in Western Europe, and designed propaganda for the Stalin regime. With such a varied history and body of work, scholars have often struggled to identify the core principles that tied his diverse oeuvre together.
In El Lissitzky on Paper, Samuel Johnson argues that Lissitzky’s commitment to creating works on paper is a constant that unites his endeavors. Paper played a key role in the utopian projects that informed Lissitzky’s work, and the artist held a commitment to print as the premier medium of immediate public exchange. Johnson analyzes and contextualizes this idea against the USSR’s strict management of this essential resource and the growth of new media communications, including the telephone, telegraph, and film.
With this book, Johnson presents a significant contribution to scholarship on this major artist, revealing new connections between Lissitzky’s work in architecture and visual art and bringing to light sources from largely unstudied Russian archives.
Elizabeth Scheu Close
A Life in Modern ArchitectureJane King Hession
University of Minnesota Press, 2020
An in-depth account of the life and career of Minnesota’s first modern architect
2024 Docomomo US Modernism in America Award of Excellence
2021 Finalist, Minnesota Book Award, Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction
Elizabeth “Lisl” Scheu Close (1912–2011) left an indelible mark on Minnesota’s built landscape during her six decades as an architect. In 1938, with her husband, Winston Close, she founded the state’s first architecture firm dedicated to modernism. In addition to designing the first International Style house in Minneapolis, the firm also created more than 250 handsome and efficiently planned modern residences. One of few women who were practicing architects in the mid-twentieth century, she blazed a trail for future generations of women in the profession.
As Jane King Hession shows, the trajectory of Lisl’s architectural career was shaped by the political, economic, and aesthetic upheavals of the twentieth century. Raised in a renowned modern house in Vienna, Austria, Lisl was exposed to revolutionary ideas in art and architecture at a young age. Forced to emigrate to the United States as the Nazis rose to power in Europe, she completed her architectural education at MIT. During the Depression, she struggled to find work and encountered challenges as a young woman in the field. In her pursuit of and devotion to a singular and successful career as a modern architect, she proved herself to be talented, determined, and adept at negotiating obstacles.
Through documentation of Lisl’s projects, this personal and professional biography also explores multiple aspects of modern architecture, including the innovative use of new materials and technologies, the design of prefabricated houses, and the relationship between residential design and changing American lifestyles.
Everyday Modernism
Architecture and Society in SingaporeJiat-Hwee Chang and Justin Zhuang
National University of Singapore Press, 2022
A richly illustrated account of the development of Singapore’s modern built environment.
Everyday Modernism is the first comprehensive documentation of Singapore’s modern built environment. Through a lens of social, cultural, and architectural histories, the book uncovers the many untold stories of the Southeast Asian city-state’s modernization, from the rise of heroic skyscrapers, such as the Pearl Bank Apartments, to the spread of typical utilitarian buildings like the multistory parking garage. It investigates how modernism, through both form and function, radically transformed Singapore and made its inhabitants into modern citizens. The most intensive period of such change, the author shows, happened in the 1960s and 1970s under the rise of a developmental state that sought to safeguard its new-found independence. The book also looks both earlier and later, however, ranging from the 1930s to the 1980s to cover a wider range of histories, building types, and architectural styles, expanding from the International Style and Brutalism into Art Deco and even a touch of Postmodernism. The book’s essays are richly illustrated with hundreds of archival images and illustrations, as well as contemporary photos by architectural photographer Darren Soh. By examining the evolution of the once exceptional into the typical and by learning how abstract spaces become lived places, the book traces how modernism has become part of everyday life in Singapore.
Exiled in L.A.
The Untold Story of Leopold Fischer’s Domestic ArchitectureVolker M. Welter
J. Paul Getty Trust, The, 0
In 1936, Leopold Fischer (1901–1975), in exile from Nazi Germany, arrived in California, where he created a small but distinct oeuvre of mostly domestic architecture. In contrast to his famous peers Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra, immigrants whose Southern California buildings are frequently examined—and who, like Fischer, studied with the modernist architect Adolf Loos—Fischer and his California structures have, until now, escaped the attention of architectural history.
Exiled in L.A. examines Fischer’s important, yet overlooked, contributions to Southern California architecture. As the whereabouts of Fischer’s archives remain unknown, Volker M. Welter grounds the designer’s California works in comparison with his pre-exile projects and the compositions of fellow architects in California. In the 1920s, Fischer created experimental working-class housing estates in Germany that pioneered ecological construction and living practices. Comparable to their predecessors, Fischer's California buildings revolve around the “functioning, the organization of a home,” as he defined domestic architecture in 1926. Featuring new photography and detailed architectural plans, this book is an original contribution to the literature on Southern California’s built heritage.