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Twentieth-Century Russian and East European Painting: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Johne E. Bowlt , and
Nicoletta Misler
Manufacturer: Philip Wilson Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0302006192 |
Book Description
At the heart of this pioneering study - the result of exhaustive comparative research in Russian, European and American collections - is an illustrated catalogue which provides detailed descriptions of each work in the context of the artist's career and the broader artistic developments of the age. The condition, provenance, and previous location of the works are also detailed.
The catalogue is introduced by three essays: The Russian Avant-Garde, the Hungarian Avant-Garde, and the history of the collecting of Russian Avant-Garde art. The volume concludes with artists' biographies, bibliographical information, a glossary and index.
A catalogue of 59 works, written by two of the most eminent scholars in the field.
Book Description
Unlike most Soviet-centered histories, A Vision Unfulfilled begins with a chapter summarizing late nineteenth-century Russian history, allowing instructors to begin their course with 1894, 1905, 1914, or 1917. The book also gives fuller attention to the history of the non-Russian populations in the tsarist and Soviet empires than other texts of its kind.
Customer Reviews:
best overview of the century.......2001-05-12
Morgan's book is the best that I have found for an overview of the entire 20th century in "classical" music. He divides his analysis into 3 logical sections:
Part 1. Beyond Tonality: From 1900 to World War I
Part 2. Reconstruction and New Systems: Between the Wars
Part 3. Innovation and Fragmentation: From WWII to the Present
This allows for some nuance that a simple list of composers often misses. For instance, Schoenberg's "atonal revolution" is covered in Part 1, along with the "new tonalities" of Stravinsky and Bartok. Part 2 covers the origin of the "twelve-tone system," but makes clear that it did not become influential until years later with the "serial revolution" in France, led by Messiaen and Boulez, in Part 3.
As others have noted, Morgan is not as strong on the more recent period, partly because the book was published in 1991 and thus misses such phenomena as Schnittke's surge of popularity, especially in Russia and Europe, after the collapse of the Soviet regime. I recommend two other books along with Morgan: 1) Gann's "American Music in the Twentieth-Century," which covers developments in the U.S. in greater detail, thus including for instance one of my favorites, Roger Reynolds, and 2) Griffiths' masterful "Modern Music and After," which begins after the Second World War.
Not Completely Comprehensive.......1999-12-12
This is a very good book, but it only covers the first three-quarters of the century. Minimalism is the latest movement that it really covers comprehensively. After that, most composers recieve only two or three lines of text. This is, of course, understandable, given when the book was written. Just be warned that more recent developments in music are often ignored or not given the attention they deserve. Also, it should be noted that the book generally restricts itself to "classical" music. Jazz and Free Improvisation, despite being arguably the most vital and truly revolutionary forces in music of the first 2/3 and last 1/3 of the century, respectively, are mentioned only in passing if at all.
The History of Modern Music for The Layman.......1997-03-15
As we end the 20th century, we may not realize that 20th
century music covers the same time span as the 19th
century Romantic music period. Have we grasped the meaning
of modern music. To do this one needs to understand the
history as well as the dynamics of 20th century music.
Here is a book that fills the bill. Not only does Mr. Morgan
discuss the growth and change in 20th century music but he
does it in it's historical context of our maturing as a
world. For many the atonality of 20th century music is hard
to grasp, especially when concert artists and orchestras
continue to emphasize in their repatoire 19th century music. But as the world changes so will music. A book to awaken your interest in 20th century music and the composers who were the leaders of this period.
Customer Reviews:
Don't Confuse Controversy with Intelligence.......2007-04-17
Just because an idea is challenging, controversial or goes against dominant norms doesn't make the idea intelligent or worthwhile. I had to read this book for a class on the public sphere as apart of a holocaust section. I will say that from a rhetorical standpoint the book is interesting in the language games it plays. Unfortunately its sense of constructing valid arguments about history is quite laughable. I don't believe that all Butz fans are necessarily anti-Semitic, I simply think that there are people who flock towards a theory that states "even though everyone thinks x is true they are misled." The more controversial it is to say that x isn't true, the more people seem to like it. Such people like 'being in the know' or having some insight that the majority is too blind to see, etc. Certainly what is more controversial than suggesting that the Holocaust didn't happen?
Not too long into the book it really began to dawn on me that the only thing Butz was capable of pointing out is that any type of historical knowledge relies at least partly on a bit of faith. I'll make this more clear. Prove to me that the Civil War happened. Were you there? So what if books are written about it and there are historians that will sware it happened, can they prove it? Nobody died at Gettysburg from gunshots and cannon fire, they just caught the flu. I mean as long as we have Butz who is going to completely regard primary as well as secondary sources one could never prove anything historically. The National Socialists were notorious for their meticulous documentation, and the extermination of Jews is no exception. They documented their actions to the last detail going through pain staking steps to ensure the most efficient mass production of death ever seen by mankind.
Butz answer to all of this? Elaborate language games with an internal logic that is absolutely astounding. They all died of Typhoid and starvation, there was no gas chambers. Set aside the plethora of evidence that suggests otherwhise, is this somehow a better scenario? If the Jews were concentrated into camps and then systematically starved and allowed to die is this somehow not a genocide? Seriously stop and think for one second. There is also hard facts with which he is not able to make a valid argument. Before the Nazi Party there were nearly 9 million Jews in the European nations that the Third Reich would come to occupy. After the war there was 3 million Jews. Where on Earth did these 6 million people go? The numbers that fled to Israel and other countries before the war don't even come close to one million. They all died of typhoid? That is blatantly absurd unless typhoid was diliberately unleashed upon the camps, and there again is that somehow better than gas chambers? The science to back up the notion that there were no gas chambers is incredibly laughable. If you set out to prove a specific conclusion and want to prove it badly enough, you'll find a way. And sure enough holocaust deniers use all kinds of bogus science that has again and again been refuted by countless scientific studies. The way Butz and other deniers interogate the eye witness accounts only makes them look foolish.
In the end I stick to my earlier point. It is absolutely irrefutable that massive numbers of Jews, Gypsys and others were locked up into camps. The Nazis viewed the Jews as an inferior race and were very clear about their desire to rid Europe of their presence. Hitler's speeches and writings make no mistake about his personal and focussed hatred of the Jews and his belief that Germany and the world was better off without them. They were imprisoned and forced into hard labor because of this racial hatred. An estimated 70% of those who were imprisoned did not live to see the end of the war. Does it matter how they died? Does it matter if they were starved to death or if there was gas chambers? I personally do believe that there were gas chambers as do most reputable historians. But I have to ask what on Earth does it matter? Nearly six million people vanished after being imprisoned by a regime that called for their destruction. What do you need to be convinced that a genocide occurred? Cinematic documentation? Oh wait, the Nazis did document the concentration camps. Butz may have been educated, but that doesn't make his argument anything more than utter nonsense and futile nonsense at that. Genocide is genocide regardless of how it is carried out.
feh.......2007-03-27
Not the best book in my library. I'd take a pass on this and buy an extra roll of toilet paper. It is softer.
The Holohoax Denier's Bible.......2007-02-22
This book is a stunning achievement, it is probably the only top down and comprehensive analysis of the whole of the creation of the holohoax. I participate in online debates, and it is my best reference by far. If you want to understand the holohoax, this is the book to get.
The holohoax is not sophisticated, it is a crude deliberate hoax, and this is easily demonstrated. And yet, we've been lied to for so long, there is a remarkable resistance to the truth of the matter. As a result, the revisionist position is a very hard sell. One of the failures of revisionism is there has been no analysis of this resistance.
It is easy to demonstrate the hoax. There are two existing 'extermination camps', Auschwitz and Majdanek. Tours are conducted in both these camps, and hoax gas chambers are shown to the visitors. How do we know the gas chambers are hoaxes? Both have unbarred plate glass windows! No joke. Google 'gas chamber doors a comparison in photos' to see photos of the Auschwitz hoax gas chamber. A picture of the Majdanek hoax 'gas chamber' in on the USHMM web site. For more info, google 'David Cole interviews Frantizek Piper', Piper is the Director of Research at Auschwitz.
(Note: the Auschwitz hoax gas chamber an unbelievably crude fraud, the Majdanek hoax gas chamber was a delousing room used to kill lice on clothes to prevent the spread of typhus.)
It is important to look critically at the 'evidence' offered for the holohoax. This is the book that does it. The result will amaze you.
Here is an example of an actual online debate:
DW writes ------
General George Patton vomited at what he saw in the death camps. General Eisenhower ordered that tens of thousands of US troop tour the just liberated camps to be witnesss because he knew the day would come that someone would start denying this grave evil.
My response ------
Neither Patton nor Eisenhower visited what are now claimed to be 'death camps'. Of course, the holohoax did initially maintain that camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, Belsen Bergen, and others in Germany proper were 'death camps' complete with gas chambers, etc. There was no shortage of eyewitness testimony to gassings at these camps, and there were pictures of 'gas chambers' in the camps published in US newspapers and magazines. The problem is, that was all a hoax, as now everyone, including the USHMM, admits. The USHMM, and the rest of the holohoax establishment, now maintain that there were only six 'death camps', all in Poland, four were razed before the end of the war, Auschwitz and Majdanek were captured by the Russians.
What did Patton and Eisenhower see? Perhaps you saw the recent AP article on the records at Bad Arolson, which were not 'released' by the way. This is from the AP article
"Frank, Annelise M. is Anne Frank.
She was on one of the last trains to Germany before the Nazi occupation of Holland crumbled. Six months later, aged 15, she died an anonymous death, one of some 35,000 casualties of typhus that ravaged the Bergen-Belsen camp."
Patton and Eisenhower saw camps devastated by disease and starvation, brought on by a huge influx of prisoners from the eastern camps, and Allied bombing of supply lines. The correrspondence of the Belsen commander. Kramer, was captured and preserved, he did everything in his power to prevent the catastrophe. He was executed for his efforts.
DW ------ was heard from no more.
Butz says, "where are the bodies".......2007-02-05
What is Butz looking for? Nice well kept cemeteries, with impressive granite monuments?
Is that what it would take to satisfy him?
So he thinks that the 15 miles of file drawers of Nazi documentation at Bad Arolson are all made up, imaginary?
The Allies took plenty of pictures of the bodies they found at the concentration camps when they liberated them.
As for the bodies the Nazis "processed..."
My parents are both concentration camp survivors. I visited Auschwitz with my father almost 20 years ago.
In the little theater they have there, I saw films the Nazis had taken themselves. We saw films of bodies stacked among railroad ties and being set aflame in the town of Chelmno.
My father, in a quiet but resolute voice, told me that answered the question for him of what happened to his 37 year old mother and 10 year old brother, who had been transported to Chelmno early in the war when the Nazis liquidated the Jewish population of his small town of Lask.
My father and grandfather spent several years in the Lodz ghetto after that, performing forced labor for the Germans, before being transported to Auschwitz.
My grandfather died within days of liberation. At the time my father was liberated, he weighed 78 pounds, and at 17 was the sole surviving member of his family.
In 1977, he went back to Poland, and brought back a small jar of ashes and dirt, that are now buried under a monument to the martyrs of Lask in their burial association plot in Elmont, Long Island.
There must be a special place in hell for those who use their time and energy to deny the Holocaust. I know why it's important to me, I simply cannot fathom why they feel compelled to deny something so well documented.
Murder Mystery?.......2006-12-15
Reviewers here, like Skip Klauber, state: "There is an absolute mountain of evidence that the Holocaust took place to the tune of killing between 5 and 6 million Jews, yet some folks hate Jews so much that they will subscribe to the lunacy in Butz's book." What does the objective evidence show?
Whenever any murder is alleged, forensic specialists immediately set out to find the best evidence of that murder - the corpse. Here, SIX MILLION murders are alleged to have happened, but despite all of the Jewish drumbeating about the holocaust, no team of Jewish forensic specialists were dispatched to locate the remains of SIX MILLION CORPSES. Well over half a century later, and still no forensic specialists dispatched. Still no SIX MILLION CORPSES.
Saddam Hussein was recently convicted to death based upon the remains of 130 or so victims, remains that were purportedly discovered and exhumed some almost 25 years later. So, we can find 130 bodies of Saddam's victims 25 years later, but Jewish forensic specialists cannot find SIX MILLION CORPSES 60 years later?.
Holocaust advocates they want to produce documents as "receipts" of the SIX MILLION CORPSES. If only 1% of the bodies were discovered, we would need 60,000 coffins to bury them. That is only 1%. Instead, we're told a story, shown hair and teeth, and told about the "receipts" which "prove" the story. They found 100% of Saddam's alleged victims; they've found not one mass grave of any relative significance contained Hitler's alleged victims.
Something is seriously wrong here.
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A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Russian and Soviet Painters, 1900-80s
Matthew Cullerne Bown
Manufacturer: Izo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Schools, Periods & Styles
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ASIN: 0953206106 |
Customer Reviews:
Critical Sourcebook.......2007-02-18
This is an absolutely critical sourcebook for any student of Russian art, including post Revolutionary Impressionism and Socialist Realism. It has critical biographies of a huge number of Russian artists. No one should invest in Russian art without this book.
Book Description
Mining the extensive LIFE archives and the finest photo collections, this is a picture history of unparalleled depth and power. Included are remarkable unpublished images, like photos of Hitler taken by his personal photographer, alongside the classic LIFE coverage that brought the war home. From the escalating tensions of the pre-war world to the German blitzkrieg, the shock of Pearl Harbor, the fighting on land, sea, and air, D-Day, the atom bombs, and the wars historic aftermath, legendary journalist Richard B. Stolley takes a fresh look at the most important global event of the 20th century.
Customer Reviews:
The War that changed the world.......2006-10-21
Since I Love Leaning about WWII it was a great book. It has a lot of pictures but explains about WWII well. So if you want to learn about WWII it is a good book. If you don't just like reading books with words and don't pictures to make it more interesting then it would definatly be a good book. If for some reason you don't like books with a lot of pictures then mabye you should get a different book.
world war 2.......2005-07-09
In world 2 there was a war in Hawaii. (Four star book.) it is all about war and places thats on fire.And the war was long ago. And it has great pictures on the world war 2 book. This bookhas alot of airplanes in it. And it has a map that shows where it was major battle. the battle was amazing, and the war. AND ALSO THE BOOK IS GREAT!
Pictures that Speak Volumes.......2004-04-09
In Lenigrad under siege, a couple pulls a sled bearing a tiny coffin. In Coventry, a priest leads his congregation in prayer, surrounded by the ruins of their cathedral. In the field, a bleeding German soldier is comforted by his comrades, his right arm lying in the foreground. In Kent, schoolchildren watch a dogfight with expressions ranging from horror to delight. In Rotterdam, the city is leveled as far as the eye can see, except for a lone church. In an internment camp in Wyoming, two Japanese-American soldiers, visiting their families, stand honor guard beside the casket of a Japanese-American World War I veteran. Every picture in this remarkable book reminds us that the story of World War II is much more than a collection of battles and troop movements; each reminds us that the war produced a multitude of heartbreaking stories played out all over the world.
The book surveys the entire war, year by year. Each year is introduced with an essay by a well-known person (e.g., writer John Keegan introduces 1944) and includes photo-biographies of distinguished and infamous people, such as FDR and Churchill, Hitler and Mussolini. Each year also includes a section called "Then/Now," which seeks to relate some aspect of the war (e.g., war criminals) to subsequent history up to present day. A minor criticism of the book is that these attempts to make the war "relevant" seems a bit of an intrusion in the telling of the larger story.
This collection of outstanding photographs is as moving as it is comprehensive. If you have a deep interest in World War II; if you are looking for an easy-to-digest survey of the entire war; if you enjoy photography as an art form; or if you are moved by depictions of the human condition, to you I recommend this book.
Wonderful!!!.......2002-09-21
This is one of the best book around about World War 2. Beautiful pictures and well written. A must have for anyone who is a World War 2 "buff" or anyone interested in the subject.
Good for any WW2 enthusiast.......2002-01-17
This book is a great collectors item for all WW2 enthusiasts and also for anyone else. It contains pictures from war torn places all over the world during that era. From spain to the beaches of Normandy and from China to North Africa, I found pictures of almost everything here.
Book Description
Of all the horrors of the last century--perhaps the bloodiest century of the past millennium--ethnic cleansing ranks among the worst. The term burst forth in public discourse in the spring of 1992 as a way to describe Serbian attacks on the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but as this landmark book attests, ethnic cleansing is neither new nor likely to cease in our time.
Norman Naimark, distinguished historian of Europe and Russia, provides an insightful history of ethnic cleansing and its relationship to genocide and population transfer. Focusing on five specific cases, he exposes the myths about ethnic cleansing, in particular the commonly held belief that the practice stems from ancient hatreds. Naimark shows that this face of genocide had its roots in the European nationalism of the late nineteenth century but found its most virulent expression in the twentieth century as modern states and societies began to organize themselves by ethnic criteria. The most obvious example, and one of Naimark's cases, is the Nazi attack on the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. Naimark also discusses the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the expulsion of Greeks from Anatolia during the Greco-Turkish War of 1921-22; the Soviet forced deportation of the Chechens-Ingush and the Crimean Tatars in 1944; the Polish and Czechoslovak expulsion of the Germans in 1944-47; and Bosnia and Kosovo.
In this harrowing history, Naimark reveals how over and over, as racism and religious hatreds picked up an ethnic name tag, war provided a cover for violence and mayhem, an evil tapestry behind which nations acted with impunity.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent and overdue.......2005-10-01
Despite its considerable faults, this book is a terrible indictment of our common humanity. Much of it traverses well-trod ground such as the Armenian and Jewish genocides and the more recent wars of the Yugoslav succession. Other chapters deal with the expulsion of the Greeks from Anatolia and the Soviet deportation of the Chechens-Ingush and the Crimean Tatars.
The book's strongest chapter chronicles the post-war expulsion of German civilians from Poland and Czechoslovakia, where German girls and women were routinely raped by their former neighbors and where the Soviets, who were notorious rapists themselves, were welcomed as comparative saviors by the Germans. The Germans of Bohemia, Silesia and Sudetenland are compared to the Jews caught between the marauding armies of Hitler and Stalin as they carved up Poland. Neither group knew where to go. Many ended up dying in concentration camps, robbed, humiliated and finally murdered. There is little to be proud of and much to be ashamed of in robbing, raping, humiliating and murdering unarmed women and children.
Naimark speaks of Serbs being ordered to rape Muslim women and Wehrmacht soldiers looking on with smirks on their faces as their Lithuanian, Ukranian and Latvian allies raped Jewish women. Naimark tells us of Polish, German, Czech and Turkish concentration camp guards going beyond rape and revelling in all kinds of unspeakable cruelties on their defenseless charges
Why do men do such things? Naimark, a Harvard University history professor, trots out a few glib sociological reasons. He blames conniving politicians, people like Hitler, Slobodan Milosovic and their cronies, people like the SS and Arkan's Serb Tigers. That, like most of the book, is too simplistic. The truth is that all of us are to blame. All of us are guilty. Good Samaritans, as this book makes plain, are a rare commodity when the dogs of war are let loose. Most of us prefer the sports pages to accounts of what the Hutus and Tutsis are doing to each other. They have lost their novelty value for us. Because their crimes are no longer novel, they no longer attract our attention. And even if they did, what would we do? Probably, if the evidence is anything to go by, nothing.
Naimark makes the point that the Armenian genocide was proclaimed in headlines around the world. Hitler's antipathy to the Jews was hardly a state secret. Stalin is one of history's greatest mass murderers and his treatment of the Chechens and Tatars could hardly have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with his ways.
The role of Winston Churchill and other Western leaders is less familiar. Naimark mentions how Churchill and Stalin briefly discussed the plight of the Sudetenland Germans; Churchill was willing to see two million of them die and the rest shoved into an impoverished Bavaria. In less than a minute, these two same men assigned Yugoslavia to the Soviets in return for Greece remaining within the British sphere of interest. The fates of millions didn't cause either of them to lose any sleep. Nor have the Germans or the Austrians lost much sleep over their cynical involvement in the carve-up of Yugoslavia.
We probably don't lose too much sleep either about these disputes in far-off European lands of which we know so little. That, of course, is the problem. For evil to triumph, it is just necessary for good people to do nothing. That, in a nutshell, has been the lesson both of Europe in the twentieth century and of this disturbing book, which reminds us of one of Europe's most permanent and invidious cancers.
The issue of preventable cancers is now back on the agenda as the world's press belatedly considers the use of depleted uranium against the Serbs. In the end, cancers and hatreds seem to be war's only legacies and our only common inheritances. Surely, as we go into a new millennium, we should be able to do better than to hate, rape and kill. This book suggests otherwise. Although many idealists may believe that peace is worth dying for, this book shows that many of the less idealistic believe that faith, fatherland and material advantage are all worth killing for. Rape, gang rape and rape murder were part of everyday life. Postscript: I air many of these issues in my new book.
Interesting with lumping.......2005-03-30
This book is a good rundown of tragedies that befell people in Europe in the 20th century, and especially it is important that it reminds us of the Armenian genocide and the Greek catastrophe. However there exist two major problems with this text. The first is the use of the word 'ethnic cleansing' a term coind by americans to excuse the was in Bosnia and Kosovo, it was a term that was sopposed to embody racism and remind us of the Holocuast. However the term is disengenous and inaptly applied. Their is a difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing and their is a difference actually between ethnic cleansing and what happaned in Kosovo. No ethnicity was actually cleansed in Bosnia or Kosovo, rather religions assaulted eachother, same ethnicity, different religion.
The Armenians genocide and the Holocaust do not even compare with the Bosnia conflict. And Stalins deportation of the Ingush and Chechans, a truly ethnic cleansing operation, also is incomparable.
The second flaw is that huge tracts of cleansing are missed in this account. What of the pogroms and slaugthers that befell minorities in 1913, and again in the 1920s as maps were redrawn? What of the population transfers in Cyprus? What of Stalins genocide of the Russian Poles and Germans and many other peoples?
This is a worthwhile account but the reader must be cautioned to know that these incidents are very different, and that not every case of european 'cleansing' is brought to the surface here.
Seth J. Frantzman
great resource on some of the worst acts of the 20th century.......2002-03-11
Fired of Hatred tells of the history of genocide, ethnic cleasining and forced deportation of ethnic groups in the 20th century. It deals with Nazi Holocaust, the most famous case of 20th century genocide and provides information that people might not know like how the Third Reich considered plans to move Jews to modern-day Israel and other locations like Madagascar. It also deals with genocide in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s which is still fresh in people's minds and helps to show the idea of 'never again' mentioned at the end of the second world war never fully materialized. One of the strong points of fires of hatred is that it sheds light on lesser known examples of genocide in the 20th century like that of the Greeks and Armenians in the Ottaman Empire and the treatment of Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia after the end of the second world war. It also deals with how the U.S.S.R brutally treated Chechnya an important section to better understand the current conflict in that region.
My only problem with the book is that it doesn't cover enough. It does a good job of covering what it has but neglects important things like the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 which was a large scale.
A Tour de Force.......2001-02-10
Naimark's work is tour de force bound to brew controversy among policymakers and historians alike. This is a vital contribution to the burgeoning literature on nationalism...the consequences. Bravo.
Book Description
This book chronicles one hundred years of dramatic developments in ballet, modern, and experimental dance for stage and screen in Europe and North America. The volume is magisterial in scope, encompassing the history of theatrical dance from 1900 through 2000. Beginning with turn-of-the-century dancer-choreographers like Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Michel Fokine, and a bit later Vaslav Nijinsky, and proceeding through the profusion of dance styles performed today, the book provides an unparalleled view of dance in performance as it changed and grew in the twentieth century. Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick set dance in broader cultural and historical contexts, examine specific dance works, and explore the contributions of outstanding choreographers, performers, visual artists, impresarios, composers, critics, and other figures. They discuss the breakaway barefoot dance of the early 1900s and demonstrate its links with later forms and styles. With unusual detail, fascinating illustrations, and wide-ranging insights, this book is an indispensable guide to the transformations in the dance scene of the twentieth century.
Customer Reviews:
Superb.......2006-01-02
Dance, in whatever form, is a human activity that is usually done vertically, albeit with occasional (and deliberate) falls to the floor that are recovered with skill and grace. And to appreciate dance fully one must do so vertically, and revile in the accompanying overdoses of perspiration that are liquid proof of its exertions. But one can also appreciate dance from a more intellectual viewpoint, from the comfort of the armchair: as a researcher or as a spectator, as a reader or as a viewer. This book, thick and massive, and packed full of fascinating insights and information, will definitely be of utility to those of the former class. It is a book that must be read cover to cover, as its literary patterns conform to an organized choreography.
Anyone who is heavily involved in dance, either as a professional dancer, a historian, or as a choreographer will have some preconceptions of the history of dance. The content of this book will no doubt challenge some of these preconceptions. In many instances it offers viewpoints, along with references that seem to be contrary to accepted wisdom. For example, it has been asserted in many works that modern dance in America began as a rebellion against ballet, against its rigidity and insistence on structure. Certainly there is anecdotal evidence for this belief, but the authors paint a picture that is somewhat more complicated. Ballet, they say, at least high quality ballet, was not available at the time, and dance in general was viewed as `virtual prostitution'.
Readers will also get introduced to a lot of figures in dance that may be unknown to them, such as Maud Allan, Loie Fuller, Leonid Massine, Nikolai Semenoff, Hans von Manen, and Jiri Kylian. But the usual suspects, such as Isadora Duncan, Serge Diaghilev, Anna Pavlova, Mary Wigman, Ruth St. Denis, George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Vaslav Nijinsky, Charles Weidman, Ted Shawn, Twyla Tharp, Robert Joffrey, Merce Cunningham, and Mikhail Baryshnikov are all discussed in great detail. In addition, it is not just a book on the history of twentieth-century dance in America and Europe, for the authors also discuss this history in Japan and Russia. The book is also full of exquisite photos.
It is clear from the reading of the book that the choreographers of the twentieth century had very strong personalities and had their own idiosyncratic views of the nature and philosophy of dance. St. Denis for example held that "dance begins in consciousness, not in the body"; Maud Allan that "there should be nothing to mar the rhythmic sense of continuous harmonious expression"; Isadora Duncan spoke of her ability to "evoke movement out of the well-springs of experience"; and Rudolf Laban spoke of dance being a projection of the deeper levels of the human psyche and that dance "contains the gift of ethical understanding". All revolution and change is brought about by driven individuals who hold to their own vision of what should be.
It is also clear that the dance profession survived in many instances on shoestring budgets, with the lack of financial backing due to societal attitudes and prejudices, along with rapidly changing tastes throughout the twentieth century. The diversity of dance styles exploded in the twentieth century, and for dance historians this was both a blessing and a curse. Naturally it gave them much work, but it also required them to attempt a classification of dance movements, the latter of which is often held to be an anathema especially by the practitioners of modern dance. But Rudolf Laban, and other inventors of dance notation, gave all dance, indeed all movement, systemization and codification. The study of dance, and its creation, is made easier by these notational schemes.
In the field of geometric topology in mathematics, one learns of transformations that do not have fixed points, i.e. when these transformations act on objects they move every point. The title of this book was inspired by a quotation of Albert Einstein that "there are no fixed points in space." When the book is completed, one is astonished by the incredible amount of change that occurred in dance in the twentieth century. If the developments in dance in this time period are represented by a transformation, one can easily believe that it is very complicated, that it has no fixed points. But what can one say about the twenty-first century? The authors allude to future developments in dance at various places in the book. Can we expect more change that defies current categorization and systemization? As the twentieth century progressed, one observes the importance of technology, with this technology being exploited fully by choreographers, both in lighting, presentation, and staging. In the twenty-first century, we will observe continued use of technology, but this technology will also be responsible for creating new dance forms and patterns. Instead of being used by the choreographer the technology will become the choreographer. And this technology will also perform the dances. When a book like this is written at the end of the twenty-first century, the list of choreographers and dancers it contains will include many that are not human.
Fantastic Dance History Book.......2005-10-04
"No Fixed Points" is by far the finest dance history book on the market. Ms. Reynolds is brilliant in her observations, thoroughly researched, technically accurate on every point, insightful, succint, and (when necessary) hysterical. Don't let the size intimidate you, it is a page turner, and at times, a true scorcher. Ms. Reynolds literally choreographs the full spectrum of what was 20th century dance: no stone was left unturned. Most remarkable, though, was her ability to just suck you in where you never wanted to leave. The only negative is that the reader can only envision the events, rather than experience then, BUT, through Ms. Reynolds superb ability, the 2nd hand / vicarious experience(s) are amazingly satisfying.
Book Description
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