In the fraught years leading up to World War II, many modern artists and architects emigrated from continental Europe to the United States and Britain. The experience of exile infused their modernist ideas with new urgency and forced them to use certain materials in place of others, modify existing works, and reconsider their approach to design itself. In Objects in Exile, Robin Schuldenfrei reveals how the process of migration was crucial to the development of modernism, charting how modern art and architecture was shaped by the need to constantly face—and transcend—the materiality of things.
Taking readers from the prewar era to the 1960s, Schuldenfrei explores the objects these émigrés brought with them, what they left behind, and the new works they completed in exile. She argues that modernism could only coalesce with the abandonment of national borders in a process of emigration and resettlement, and brings to life the vibrant postwar period when avant-garde ideas came together and emerged as mainstream modernism. Examining works by Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Herbert Bayer, Anni and Josef Albers, and others, Schuldenfrei demonstrates the social impact of art objects produced in exile.
Shedding critical light on how the pressures of dislocation irrevocably altered the course of modernism, Objects in Exile shows how artists and designers, forced into exile by circumstances beyond their control, changed in unexpected ways to meet the needs and contexts of an uncertain world.
Awards and Recognition
- One of Metropolis' 10 Architecture and Design Books Worth Adding to Your Reading List
- Shortlisted for the Architectural Book Awards, Treatises Category
Robin Schuldenfrei is the Tangen Reader in 20th-Century Modernism at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. Her books include Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany, 1900–1933 (Princeton), Iteration: Episodes in the Mediation of Art and Architecture, and Atomic Dwelling: Anxiety, Domesticity, and Postwar Architecture.
"A thought-provoking read that sheds light on the hidden narratives of objects and their profound influence on our collective heritage."—Metropolis
"Refreshingly anti-parochial. . . .Impressively done."—Owen Hatherley, Apollo: The International Art Magazine
"One of the most interesting and essential texts on modernism to be written in the last decade. . . . Schuldenfrei has made a fairly niche art historical subject incredibly approachable with brilliant but accessible text. . . . [Objects in Exile] is a phenomenally well researched and important text on the subject and should be required reading for anyone interested in modern art and design."—Angelina Lippert, New York Journal of Books
"A fascinating account on the Modernist period in the history of art, the focal point of the analysis being on the significance of migration and its impact on Modernist ideas. Schuldenfrei details an absorbing account of how the Modernist legacy was developed and maintained, evidenced by stunning prints of various artworks and insightful records of exchanges between artists and critics across borders."—Lizzie Smolenskaia, Redbrick Culture
“A brilliant and bracing account of modern art and architecture as it developed out of the precarities and possibilities of displacement. Schuldenfrei guides us through a modernism of shipping and customs, translations and transpositions, shattered glass and bent plywood, showing how twentieth-century modernism became a project of unpacking, literally and figuratively, its own past.”—Jennifer L. Roberts, Harvard University
“Modernism, as we presently know it, never was. Shining as archival researcher, imaginative thinker, and lucid writer all at once, Robin Schuldenfrei reveals that exile was fundamental to modernism because it forced the transpositions, contingencies, and remediations of objects and ideas. Objects in Exile is a tour de force of modernism redefined.”—Christine Mehring, University of Chicago
“An important revisionist statement about American modern art, architecture, graphic design, and craft. In this perceptive and meticulously researched book, Schuldenfrei shows how exile generated new forms of modernism than those originally created in Weimar Germany, offering a nuanced story of cultural transfer.”—Kathleen James-Chakraborty, University College Dublin
“Bold and impressively wide-ranging. Schuldenfrei argues that German modernism in art, architecture, and design was not something fully formed and perfected in the Weimar years, but that the later period of diffusion was one in which this important history was completed and realized.”—Frederic J. Schwartz, University College London
