BOOK REVIEWED: Alexandra Chiriac, Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.
As the Romanian city of Timișoara celebrates its position as a 2023 European Capital of Culture with an extensive exhibition by the Jewish Romanian artist Victor Brauner, Alexandra Chiriac’s comprehensive book on avant- garde design and performance in early twentieth-century Bucharest provides a very welcome addition to the process of national and international rediscovery. The explosively creative interwar period and the decisive Jewish cultural contribution to the development of Romanian art from the era have been slowly recognized by scholars as central to both the narrative of the country’s national identity and to larger frameworks concerning the European avant-garde.
Despite the significance of the Bucharest avant-garde for understanding Romanian art, design, and performance, it is still rare to encounter scholarly works on the subject. The most popular ones, Erwin Kessler’s volume Colors of the...