Engineer, Agitator, Constructor

We regarded ourselves as engineers, we maintained that we were building things', declared Hannah Höch, describing a radical new approach to artmaking that took shape in the 1920s and 30s, in lockstep with the era's shifts in industry, technology and labour, and amid the impact of momentous events: World War I, the Russian Revolution, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the rise of fascism. Artists involved with varied avant-gardes - Dada, the Bauhaus, Futurism, Constructivism and de Stijl - reinvented their roles to create a dynamic art for a new world. This experimentation is richly represented in the Merrill C. Berman Collection, one of the most significant private collections of early-20th-century works on paper.

Published in conjunction with a major exhibition celebrating MoMA's acquisition of more than 300 works from the collection, this richly illustrated book includes close readings of drawings, propaganda posters, advertising, architecture, exhibition installations, journals and theatre design. Among the themes it explores are the crucial role of collage and photomontage in the interwar period; the importance of collective authorship; and the impact of political, economic and social change on visual culture.'

“The scope is encyclopedic, surveying a time when individuals sacrificed their artistic independence to ideological programs of mass appeal [...]That needn't constitute a failure. It may be a clear-eyed choice made on principle.”

Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented, at the Museum of Modern Art, explores the ways, in the 1920s and '30s, adventurous art was put into the service of politics and social change in Soviet Russia, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and elsewhere in Europe.--Karen Wilkin "Wall Street Journal"
Superabundant and full of eye-opening creative churn.--Rachel Saltz "New York Times"
--Peter Schjeldahl "New Yorker"
Looks at the reinvention of the role of the artist and the functions of art that took place in tandem with historical shifts in industry, technology. and labor amidst the impact of World War I...-- "Architectural Record"
Stunning rarely seen images and a well-constructed text about known and lesser known artists and works of the early twentieth-century avant-garde help shape this exhibition catalog [... ]the overall book manages to convey a cohesive picture of the collection, movements, and artists represented ...made art for a changing world through activism, agitation, propaganda, use of technological innovations, advertising, and marketing.--Barbara Ann Opar "ARLIS/NA Reviews"

Jodi Hauptman is Senior Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Adrian Sudhalter is Research Curator of The Merrill C. Berman Collection, Rye, New York.

How the modernist avant-gardes from Dada to constructivism reconceived their roles, working as propagandists, advertisers, publishers, graphic designers, curators and more, to create new visual languages for a radically changed world "We regarded ourselves as engineers, we maintained that we were building things ... we put our works together like fitters." So declared the artist Hannah H

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