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AHC interview with Charlotte Kux.
No full textCharlotte Kux, 1997Charlotte Kux (nee Birnbaum) was born in Barcelona in 1928. She lived in Vienna and went to a private protestant school in the sixth Viennese district. After the Nazis' rise to power, she immigrated to the US via Switzerland and France. She arrived in New York in November 1938.Austrian Heritage CollectionSee also Charlotte Kux Collection (AR 10684
Ben Shahn and art as weapons for decency.
No full textThis is an intellectual biography of the American Jewish artist, Ben Shahn which traces the development of his philosophy of art and life throughout his career. His art and life reveal the complex and sometimes problematic relationship of art, social content, and politics. Shahn should be considered an intellectual and critic, who happened to employ visual images for commentary rather than the traditional pen and/or speech. Like the left intellectuals, Shahn painted, wrote, and spoke about the role of the artist and art in society, the necessity of engagement, the importance of protecting civil liberties, and his fears of a highly mechanized, technological society.He believed that the artist should be allowed the freedom to create, to present their works--even if critical--to society, and to motivate action. Additionally, Shahn was active in New Deal art projects, various political campaigns, labor unions, the civil rights movement, the test ban struggle, and the anti-Vietnam war protests. Placing Shahn in the broader framework of intellectual and cultural life in America between the 1930s and 1960s offers an opportunity to more fully understand the left and the place of art in modern society.In carrying out the tasks outlined above, the accepted tools of critical biography have been employed-factual evidence, sources, letters, and a close examination of his art work. The chapters are chronologically arranged within which various themes are explored.More than a New Deal humanist, Ben Shahn was a lifelong advocate of human welfare, values, and dignity. This study strives to overcome the identification of the artist with one era, the Depression, and one genre, Social Realism, to provide an overview of his life and career that effectively demonstrates the connection between art of social content and politics.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Northern Arizona University, 1997.School code: 0391
Johannes Urzidil (1896-1970) : Das 'Prager Tryptychon' und seine Erzaehlstruktur.
No full textMA thesis at the University of Vienna, examining the writings of Johannes Urzidil as presented in his collection of short stories, ‘Prager Triptychon’.See also Urzidil, Johannes, 1896-1970 : Prager Triptychon, Muenchen, A. Langen, 1960. LBI Library call number PT 2643 R9 P7
From the pale of settlement to "Pacific Overtures": The evolution of Boris Aronson's visual aesthetic.
No full textFrom 1924 to 1976, artist-scene designer Boris Aronson applied his aesthetic vision to over one hundred productions in the Yiddish and English-speaking theatres of America. Aronson arrived in New York in 1923, bringing with him a new visual vocabulary rooted in Russian avant-garde art and scene design principles. Recurring adaptations and reinterpretations of Russian Cubo-Futurist and Constructivist art and scene design values were evident in varying degrees throughout the entire body of his work for the American theatre.Aronson's work was affected by the abstract aesthetic philosophy of Russian Cubo-Futurist designers Alexandra Exter and Natan Altman, as well as Kamerny Theatre director Alexander Tairov; the Constructivist practices of director Vsevolod Meyerhold and his collaborator, scene designer Liubov Popova; the exaggerated Jewish folk art imagery of Marc Chagall; and the highly expressive theatricalist production style of director Evgeny Vakhtangov.Cubo-Futurist and Constructivist qualities can be seen in Aronson's use of architectural constructions to sculpt and organize three-dimensional stage space; geometrization of lines and forms; preference for multi-leveled stage floors; and creation of abstract emblematic designs that acted as visual metaphors to evoke a play's central mood and meaning. These characteristics were prominent in his Yiddish theatre work in the 1920s, and were later restated but somewhat concealed for his realistic designs of the 1930s (such as Awake and Sing, 1935). Abstract elements appeared at times in the 1940s for his ballet and musical theatre designs that veered toward expressionism. In the mid to late 1950s, abstraction began to re-emerge in a more obvious form with the designer's epic creations for productions such as The Firstborn (1958) and J. B. (1958). Aronson's abstract aesthetic was recast with a technologically-oriented patina for the concept musicals of Harold Prince in the 1960s and 1970s. By the time he began his association with Prince, Aronson had absorbed an urban American sensibility which he ingeniously distilled and fused with Russian avant-garde precepts of abstraction. The Prince musicals marked the apotheosis of Aronson's career by embodying the designer's ultimate cross-cultural union of Constructivism with American high technology.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 1997.School code: 0234