Empire of Ecstasy. Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910 - 1935. - gebrauchtes Buch

1997, ISBN: 0520206630

Berkeley, University of California Press, 422 S. Originalhalbleinen mit Schutzumschlag. Umschlag leicht berieben, vereinzelt Bleistiftanstreichungen oder -anmerkungen. - Empire of Ecstasy… Mehr…

Berkeley, University of California Press, 422 S. Originalhalbleinen mit Schutzumschlag. Umschlag leicht berieben, vereinzelt Bleistiftanstreichungen oder -anmerkungen. - Empire of Ecstasy offers a novel interpretation of the explosion of German body culture between the two wars: nudism and nude dancing, gymnastics and dance training, dance photography and criticism, and diverse genres of performance from solo dancing to mass movement choirs. Karl Toepfer presents this dynamic subject as a vital and historically unique construction of "modern identity," which stimulated often contradictory impulses, desires, and ambitions in participants and enthusiasts. -- Radiating modernity, freedom, and power, the body appeared to Weimar artists and intelligentsia to be the source of a transgressive energy that resisted containment within particular fields of study or cultural doctrines. Most provocative about the body culture of the Weimar Republic was its insistent belief in the human body as a sign and manifestation of powerful, mysterious "inner" conditions. Indeed, modernity of being depended less upon the rationalization of life than upon the appearance of the "modern" body. -- Toepfer suggests that this view of the modern body sought to extend the aesthetic experience beyond the boundaries imposed by rationalized life and to transcend these limits in search of ecstasy. Through the presentation and analysis of unpublished archival material (including many little-known photographs) and the reclamation of forgotten discourses of fashion, gymnastics, nudism, and the visual arts, he investigates the process of constructing an "empire" of appropriative impulses toward ecstasy. Toepfer presents the work of well-known figures such as Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, and Oskar Schlemmer, as well as many obscure but equally fascinating practitioners of German body culture. ISBN 0520206630Kulturgeschichte [Deutschland ; Ausdruckstanz ; Freikörperkultur ; Geschichte 1910-1935, Medizin, Gesundheit, Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie] 1997, [PU: University of California Press]<