Advancing a Different Modernism analyzes a long-ignored but formative aspect of modern architecture and art. By examining selective buildings by the Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner (1850-1923) and by the Slovenian designer Joze Plecnik (1872-1957), the book reveals the fundamental political and ideological conservatism that helped shape modernism's history and purpose. This study thus revises the dominant view of modernism as a union of progressive forms and progressive politics. Instead, this innovative volume promotes a nuanced and critical consideration of how architecture was creatively employed to advance radically new forms and methods, while simultaneously consolidating an essentially conservative nationalist self-image.
"With Advancing a Different Modernism Mansbach, already recognized as one of the pre-eminent scholars of Central European modernism, moves the field in an exciting and stimulating direction, looking beyond the 'classics' of modernism and incorporating works of artists for whom the ideas and ideals of nationalism, and its role in modernism, were profoundly formative."
- Samuel D. Albert, Fashion Institute of Technology
- Samuel D. Albert, Fashion Institute of Technology