The Designers of Spacetime. Modernist Architecture in Film
Katarzyna Uchowicz
katarzyna.uchowicz@ispan.plInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4844-5629
Abstract
The article discusses selected inter-war artistic projects in which architecture and film intersect. The activity of the group of modernist artists called Praesens serves as a starting point for a presentation of modernism as both a synthesis of the arts and as a space of interdisciplinary artistic dialogues. Several issues are addressed here to capture the relations between film and architecture, namely: the involvement of architects in stage design (as exemplified by Szymon Syrkus and Andrzej Pronaszko), collaboration between architects and film directors (Robert Mallet-Stevens, Marcel L’Herbier), the production of photomontages, the practice of modelling stage designs on architecture as well as designing architectural structures inspired by stage designs. Another question discussed is the new language of architecture exemplified by such terms as the design of movement or ‘spacetime’. These terms drawn from the language of the film were both commonly used by architects and widely commented on by Ricciotto Canudo, an Italian theoretician of cinema. Moreover, this paper recalls the biographies of architects who, after having graduated in architecture, devoted their lives and careers to stage design, entering a new field of artistic activity.
Keywords:
modernism, architecture of 20th century, Praesens, spacetime, synthesis of the arts, design of movementReferences
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Authors
Katarzyna Uchowiczkatarzyna.uchowicz@ispan.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4844-5629
Art historian working at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where her research duties focus on documenting 20th-century architecture. Her main research interests include the architecture of the 20th century, the interdisciplinary culture of modernism, the avant-garde and the post-war experimental art. She curated the exhibition Awers/rewers. Architekt Bohdan Lachert [Obverse/Reverse. Bohdan Lachert, Architect] (Museum of Architecture, Wroclaw), and co-curated Algorithmen der Modernität [The Algorithms of Modernity] (Polish Institute, Berlin). She published Eternity and a Moment. 1918-1939 – Architecture as a Tool in Constructing Polish National Identity (2017), Ariergarda modernizmu. Katalog projektów i realizacji Bohdana Lacherta i Józefa Szanajcy [The Arrière-garde of Modernism. Bohdan Lachert and Józef Szanajca: Designs and Executed Works. A Catalogue] (2017), Awers/rewers. Architekt Bohdan Lachert [Obverse/Reverse. Bohdan Lachert, Architect] (2018); she co-edited (with A. Kędziorek and M. Wirkus) Archipelag CIAM. Listy Heleny Syrkus [The CIAM Archipelago. Letters by Helena Syrkus] (2019). She teaches history and theory of architecture and urban planning in the 20th century at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
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