Issue
24/Spring
2002
The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts
Senior Editor
Leslie Sternlieb
Guest Editor
Joel Hoffman
With this issue, The Wolfsonian–Florida International University celebrates the integration into its publishing program of The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts. It seemed appropriate to dedicate the first volume published under the auspices of FIU to scholarship conducted on the Wolfsonian's collection, primarily through its fellowship program. Established in 1993 to encourage a multidisciplinary approach to research in the material culture of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, the Wolfsonian's fellowship program has hosted a number of scholars from North and South America, Europe, and Australia, and supported a diversity of projects examining aesthetics, production, use, and cultural significance of decorative arts, design, and architecture.
Guest editor Joel Hoffman, The Wolfsonian's former associate director for programs and administration, opens this volume with an interpretive framework for defining and approaching the museum's extraordinary holdings, amassed by its founder Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. and donated to FIU in 1997. Analyzing both quantitative and qualitative constructions of the collection in press coverage, independent research, exhibitions, publications, and programs, he points to the difficulty of objective classification and the rich opportunities for future research.
Four articles then explore diverse aspects of design in modern Europe from equally diverse perspectives. While some consider broad cultural phenomena and others focus on individual artists, all examine the nexus between design and its context: Stalin as Isis and Ra: Socialist Realism and the Art of Design by John Bowlt; Modernity and Tradition in Hungarian Furniture, 1900-1938: Three Generations by Juliet Kinchin; W.A.S. Benson, Machinery, and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain by Alan Crawford; and Feast of Dutch Diversity: Nieuwe Kunst Book Design by Alston W. Purvis.
The next two articles look at Italian material culture: Mobilizing the Nation: Italian propaganda in the Great War by Thomas Row; and The Tripoli Trade Fair and the Representation of Italy's African Colonies by Brian McLaren.
The final three essays provide insight into American art of the 1920s and 1930s: From World War I to the Popular Front: The Art and Activism of Hugo Gellert by James Wechsler; Looking at Labor: Images of Work in 1930s American Art by Erika Doss; and "Painting Section" in Black and White: Ethel Magafan's Cotton Pickers by Susan Valdés-Dapena.
Publication of this volume would not have been possible without the support and sponsorship of The Cowles Charitable Trust and Furthermore, the publication program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, Inc.
Issue 24 is distributed by MIT Press.
