Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism) (Volume 27)

Germany of the 1920s offers a stunning moment in modernity, a time when surface values first became determinants of taste, activity, and occupation: modernity was still modern, spectacle was still spectacular. Janet Ward's luminous study revisits Weimar Germany via the lens of metropolitan visual culture, analyzing the power that 1920s Germany holds for today's visual codes of consumerism. Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Modern Surface and Postmodern Simulation. A Retrospective Retrieval 1. Functionalist Façades: The Reformation of Weimar Architecture 2. Electric Stimulations: The Shock of the New Objectivity in Weimar Advertising 3. Into the Mouth of the Moloch: Weimar Surface Culture Goes to the Movies 4. The Display Window: Designs and Desires of Weimar Consumerism Appendix: Selected Weimar Periodicals and Newspapers Notes Illustration Sources Index It is in our time that the Enlightenment project has reached its ultimate implosion. "No more facade," announced the architectural critic Adolf Behne in 1925. Janet Ward. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.