Josef Frank - Böcker

A two-volume compendium of Josef Frank’s culturally critical, often witty and biting texts on modernism and architecture, offered for the first time in a complete edition alongside many of the original illustrations.For more than five decades, from the 1910s to the early 1960s, Josef Frank was one of the leading figures of Modernism and, at the same time, one of its sharpest critics. In his many essays and articles, as well as in his book Architecture as Symbol, Frank sought to expose the layers of meaning—and the flaws—of Modernism, its underlying assumptions, and what he viewed as its often misguided implementations. Above all, this internationally renowned architect strove to reclaim for modern design some of the freedom it had lost through its dogmatization.Editors Tano Bojankin, Christopher Long, and Iris Meder, along with award-winning Austrian designer Peter Duniecki, have compiled all available published texts by Josef Frank on these subjects into a beautiful, highly readable, collectible two-volume set. Introduced by one of America's leading architects, Denise Scott Brown, the extensive written oeuvre of Josef Frank is made accessible to both bibliophiles and a wider public interested in modernism, architecture, and one of its most influential critics.

Previously unpublished, Josef Frank's searching essays on art and modernism find trends of totalitarianism in European aesthetics have crossed into the United States.Reflections on the Art of Our Time is  Josef Frank‘s (1885–1967) previously unpublished analysis of cultural developments since the fin de siècle. Frank believed that modern art and design had fallen prey to totalitarian and dictatorial currents in Europe, which culminated in the Second World War. He also observed that these same disturbing trends were spreading to the United States, where he was then living in exile, teaching and writing. Frank’s “Letter to the Editor” concerning Piet Mondrian, written on the occasion of the latter’s major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, which is also included in this work, exemplifies Frank’s concerns about the development of contemporary modernism. Edited and with contributions from Tano Bojankin, Caterina Cardamone, Hermann Czech, Christopher Long, Claudia Mazanek, along with an extended article by Otto Kapfinger.Includes full-color reproductions of Frank's letters and notes, photographs, and maps.