Articles from 1923
Artist Tristan Tzara (1896 – 1963) reported from Berlin for the editors at Vanity Fair on what’s new in German art. With tremendous enthusiasm he explained everything that was going on throughout all the German studios – he did not hold back – every name brand is included: Schwitters, Klee, Kandinsky, Lehmbruck, Gropius and the Bauhaus.
In this column, art critic Clive Bell (1881 – 1964) explained why neither Britain or America would have been capable of producing a writer like Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922).
In this column, art critic Clive Bell (1881 – 1964) explained why neither Britain or America would have been capable of producing a writer like Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922).
Numerous deep thoughts on the subject of Cubism by a prominent art critic of the time, Clive Bell (1881 – 1964):
“But, though in two or three years’ time Cubism may have disappeared, its influence should endure for a generation at least. The service it has rendered art is inestimable. Without it the liberating impulse given by Cezanne had been incomplete. Cezanne freed artistic sensibility from a hampering and outworn convention; Cubism imposed on it an intelligent and reasonable discipline. If a generation of free artists is now turning spontaneously towards the great tradition, it was through Cubism that it came at Ingres and Poussin.”
“The important question of the proper length of dress skirts is again racking the public press and putting a large part of our female population completely off their feed.”
Established in 1913, The National Woman’s Party worked tirelessly to secure the vote for American women – which was attained in 1920 with the Nineteenth Amendment. Flush with this victory, the organization pushed for an additional Constitutional amendment, one that would guarantee the equality of the sexes in the eyes of the law:
“Having received the assurance of Senator Curtis of Kansas, Republican Whip, that he would present their amendment in the next Congress, a delegation of 200 women went to call on [President Coolidge].”
The gross quota allowance of immigration for the new year is the same as for the last, 357,803, of which 20% or 71,000 is the maximum which may arrive in any single month… Germany has sent only 43,000 immigrants, although her quota was 67,000.
William Jennings Bryan (1860 – 1925) is best remembered today as the rube who advocated for creationism in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. In this 1923 essay he picks away at Darwin’s evolution theory using many of the arguments that he would (victoriously) deploy two years later.
One of the first American magazine articles heralding the November 4, 1922 discovery of the ancient tomb of King Tutankhamen (1341 BC – 1323 BC) by the British archaeologist Howard Carter (1874 – 1939); who was in this article, erroneously sited as an American:
What is thought may prove the greatest archeological discovery of all time has recently been made in Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor. Two chambers of a tomb have been found filled with the funeral paraphernalia of the Egyptian King Tutankhamen, and hopes are entertained that the third chamber, yet unopened, may contain the royal mummy itself.
Indignant accusations of trickery in dealing with the grain supply, which have been launched against the Russian Soviet Government by American and European editors, who were amazed to find that Russia was exporting grain in the midst of a new famine, are not particularly noticed by the Moscow press, which however, in such journals as the Moscow ‘Isvicstia’ and the ‘Economcheskaia Gizn’ feature reports of starvation in the Volga provinces.
Although there is no mention of the Soviet famine in this 1938 interview with Leon Trotsky, it is interesting nonetheless; to read it for free, you may click here.
