Book Description
The notion of utopia exists in every culture, capturing shared dreams and common goals. This book-prepared to accompany the exhibition Expressionist Utopias mounted at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1993-explores how the optimistic themes of utopia and fantasy sustained faith among artists and architects in the power of art to shape a better world during the tumultuous World War I era in Germany. The exhibition's curator, Timothy O. Benson along with David Frisby, Reinhold Heller, Anton Kaes, Wolf Prix, and Iain Boyd White present the diverse manifestations of the utopia metaphor in its progression throughout Expressionism from Arcadian to manmade utopias. This work includes a new chapter on the spectacular installation created for the exhibition by the Viennese architectural firm Coop Himmelblau.

About the Author
Timothy O. Benson is Curator of the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

SYNOPSIS

The notion of utopia exists in every culture, capturing shared dreams and common goals. This book-prepared to accompany the exhibition Expressionist Utopias mounted at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1993-explores how the optimistic themes of utopia and fantasy sustained faith among artists and architects in the power of art to shape a better world during the tumultuous World War I era in Germany. The exhibition's curator, Timothy O. Benson along with David Frisby, Reinhold Heller, Anton Kaes, Wolf Prix, and Iain Boyd White present the diverse manifestations of the utopia metaphor in its progression throughout Expressionism from Arcadian to manmade utopias. This work includes a new chapter on the spectacular installation created for the exhibition by the Viennese architectural firm Coop Himmelblau.

"Expressionist Utopias demonstrates how artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Hans Poelzig, and Erich Mendelsohn 'transformed their expectations of a natural paradise into the promise of a man-made cultural utopia.' Their work set the stage for the pragmatism that emerged in the art and architecture of the 1920s. The themes of paradise, metropolis, and architectural fantasy lent continuity to expressionism from its beginnings in 1905 to its outgrowth in the film and stage productions of the 1920s." (Journal of the Print World)

"This beautifully appointed volume of essays by five leading scholars offers an in-depth examination of an often overlooked aspect of German Expressionism-its utopian dimension and imagery." (Milka T. Bliznakov, Utopian Studies)

"[A] brilliant fusion of art and architecture." (Michael Webb, Los Angeles Architect)

"A very smart catalogue. . . . [It] deflates smug expectations and inflates insight." (William Wilson, Los Angeles Times)

Author Biography: Timothy O. Benson is Curator of the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.