{"title":"Paul Scheerbart","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"the-gray-cloth-novel-on-glass-architecture","title":"The Gray Cloth: Novel on Glass Architecture","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy Paul Scheerbart\u003cbr\u003eTranslated by John A. Stuart\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eIn The Gray Cloth\u003c\/em\u003e, Scheerbart shows that even in the most edifying buildings, the human comedy finds a home.\"—\u003cem\u003eArchitecture\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This novel will delight art historians, Brentano fans, and lovers of sophisticated irony.\"—\u003cem\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe German expressionist, architectural visionary, author, inventor, and artist Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) wrote several fictional utopian narratives related to glass architecture. In \u003cem\u003eThe Gray Cloth\u003c\/em\u003e, the first of his novels to be translated into English, Scheerbart uses subtle irony and the structural simplicity of a fairy tale to present the theories of colored glass outlined in his well-known treatise \u003cem\u003eGlass Architecture.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe novel is set forward in time to the mid-twentieth century. The protagonist, a Swiss architect named Edgar Krug, circumnavigates the globe by airship with his wife, constructing wildly varied, colored-glass buildings. His projects include a high-rise and exhibition\/concert hall in Chicago, a retirement complex for air pilots on the Fiji Islands, the structure for an elevated train across a zoological park in northern India, and a suspended residential villa on the Kuria Muria Islands off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea. Fearing that his architecture is challenged by the colorfulness of women's clothing, Krug insists that his wife wear all gray clothing with the addition of ten percent white. This odd demand brings him notoriety and sensationalizes his international building campaign. For the reader, it underlines the confluence of architecture with fashion, gender, and global media.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn his introduction, John Stuart surveys Scheerbart's career and role in German avant-garde circles, as well as his architectural and social ideas. He shows how Scheerbart strove to integrate his spiritual and romantic leanings with the modern world, often relying on glass architecture to do so. In addition to discussing the novel's reception and its rediscovery by contemporary architects and critics, Stuart shows fiction to be a resource for the study of architecture and places \u003cem\u003eThe Gray Cloth\u003c\/em\u003e in the context of German Expressionism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePaperback\u003cbr\u003e136 pages | 5 color illustrations\u003cbr\u003eMIT Press, 2003\u003cbr\u003eOriginally published in 1914\u003cbr\u003e7 x 0.5 x 9 inches\u003cbr\u003eISBN 9780262692960\u003cbr\u003eFiction, Architecture \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":313891577,"sku":"9780262692960","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/products\/The-Gray-Cloth-Paul-Scheerbarts-Novel-on-Glass-Architecture.jpg?v=1593200346"},{"product_id":"the-stairway-to-the-sun-dance-of-the-comets","title":"The Stairway to the Sun \u0026 Dance of the Comets","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBy Paul Scheerbart\u003cbr\u003eTranslated by W. Bamberger\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"[A] prism encapsulating Scheerbart’s obsessions and magnifying his (already pronounced) eccentricities … Scheerbart emerges as a figure who not only sought to incorporate art into daily life, but who also sought to fuse science and art―turning the ascetic, objective, and technical pursuit of scientific knowledge into a cultural production of humankind’s own shimmering transcendence.\"—Amanda DeMarco And Daniel Liu, \u003ci\u003eLA Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Stairway to the Sun \u0026amp; Dance of the Comets\u003c\/em\u003e brings together two short books, originally published in 1903, by the antierotic godfather of German science fiction, Paul Scheerbart. \u003cem\u003eThe Stairway to the Sun\u003c\/em\u003e contains four fairy tales of sun, sea, animals and storm, each set in a different, fantastical locale, from the giant palace of an astral star to a dwarf's underwater glass lair in the jellyfish kingdom. Scheerbart's sad, whimsical tales provide gentle though unexpected morals that outline his work as a whole: treat animals as one would treat oneself, mutual admiration will never lead to harm and if one is able to remember that the world is grand, one will never be sad.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003eDance of the Comets\u003c\/em\u003e, though published as an \"Astral Pantomime,\" was originally conceived as a scenario for a ballet, which Richard Strauss had planned to score in 1900 (and which Mahler accepted for the Vienna Opera). Though the project was never realized, Scheerbart's written choreography of dance, gesture, costume, feather dusters, violet moon hair and a variety of stars and planets outlines a sequence of events in which everyone—enthusiastic maid, temperamental king, indifferent executioner, foolish poet—seeks, joins and, in some cases, becomes a celestial body: a staging of Scheerbart's lifelong yearning for a home in the universe.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePaul Scheerbart (1863-1915) was a novelist, playwright, poet, critic, draftsman, visionary, proponent of glass architecture and would-be inventor of perpetual motion.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePaperback\u003cbr\u003e128 pages\u003cbr\u003eWakefield Press, 2016\u003cbr\u003eOriginally Published in 1903\u003cbr\u003e4.5 x 0.5 x 7 inches\u003cbr\u003eISBN 9781939663214\u003cbr\u003eShort Story, Fiction \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":31737015173192,"sku":"9781939663214","price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/products\/Stairway-to-the-Sun-Dance-of-the-Comets_Paul-Scheerbart.jpg?v=1590777783"},{"product_id":"munchausen-and-clarissa-a-berlin-novel","title":"Munchausen and Clarissa: A Berlin Novel","description":"By Paul Scheerbart\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIntroduction and translation by Christina Svendsen\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBaron Munchausen returns with visions of mobile architecture and journeys to sausage moons, in this previously untranslated novel from Paul Scheerbart. \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt is 1905 and a raging stupidity is holding sway over Europe. As an 18-year-old Clarissa and her family take refuge on the icy shores of Lake Wannsee, the legendary Baron Munchausen makes an unexpected appearance at their door. Returning to German society after a century of absence at the ripe age of 180, the Baron is cajoled into presenting his impressions of the World Fair in Melbourne, Australia, to a select gathering of Berlin celebrities. Over the course of a week, the sprightly Baron arrives nightly by sleighmobile to combat the dreary days with a series of fantastical visions and theories: he discusses mobile architecture, the role of technology in the arts and the need for art to ignore nature in its quest to discover new planetary organs and senses; the new household miracles of vacuum tubes for cleaning and potato-peeling machines; the repressive function of sexuality; and the need for progressive taxation. His tales of Melbourne eventually take his audience from a restaurant in the ocean depths to the dwellings of mineral giants in mountain caverns, before culminating in a spiritual voyage to outer space among sausage moons and sun-skins.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePaperback\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e152 pages\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWakefield Press, 2021\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e4.5 x 7 inches\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eISBN 9781939663511 \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFiction\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41337423069352,"sku":"9781939663511","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/products\/Munchausen-and-Clarissa-A-Berlin-Novel_Paul-Scheerbart_Christina-Svendsen.jpg?v=1634501241"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/collections\/Scheerbart_1.jpg?v=1359045275","url":"https:\/\/neue-galerie-design-shop.myshopify.com\/collections\/bookstore-literature-paul-scheerbart.oembed","provider":"Neue Galerie Design Shop \u0026 Book Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}