Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest by Alexandra Chiriac (review)

Reviewed by: Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest by Alexandra Chiriac Paula Ansaldo Alexandra Chiriac. Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022. 232 pp. Alexandra Chiriac's book Performing Modernism takes us on a journey through Bucharest's artistic scene from the 1920s to the early 1930s, when the city became a center for creative exchanges and Jewish artistic networks. Far from concentrating on well-known aspects and artists of the Romanian avant-gardes, the book undertakes the task of illuminating the contribution of marginalized disciplines, such as the decorative and performing arts. By focusing on forgotten Jewish artists and overlooked artworks, the book resists the tendency within the art historical discipline to neglect figures whose work developed across national and disciplinary borders and who, thus, are not so easily integrated into canonical standards of modernism. Moreover, Chiriac's research explores the role of Jewish artists as well as educators, arts patrons, and women entrepreneurs whose efforts and support contributed to sustaining the development of a modernist artistic scene in Bucharest. Like the itinerant Jewish artists of the time, the transnational nature of the phenomenon took the author on research trips across different continents in search of missing historical materials and art objects. The result is a book solidly grounded on extensive archival work that explores sources that come from institutions in Romania, Latvia, Germany, and the United States, as well as from private collections. The publication benefits deeply from the inclusion of high-quality illustrations that improve the readers' understanding of the materiality of the art objects that the book analyzes. It also contains detailed biographical notes and a series of appendices that share the author's first-time English translations of relevant Romanian historical documents that could open the door for future contributions on the topic. The book devotes its first three chapters to Bucharest's first modern design institution: the Academy of Decorative Arts. Supported by vast archival work, End Page 229 Chiriac presents a comprehensive history of the academy that questions crystalized ideas in the field, like the association of the institution with the Bauhaus or the central role of M. H. Maxy to the detriment of André Vespremie's contribution. By tracking the trajectory of Vespremie, the first director of the institution, Chiriac reveals that the curriculum of the academy was based on Schule Reimann's and shows how the design techniques and materials that Vespremie introduced to the Romanian design scene deeply influenced Maxy's future work. The investigation also focuses on the pedagogical activities and the commercial endeavors of the academy, such as the use of window displays, show interiors, and its own commercial space. Many of these enterprises were developed under the direction of Maxy's wife, Mela Brun-Maxy. Even though she managed the commercial section of the academy from 1926 to its closure in 1929, her figure has received little scholarly attention. Chiriac's research uncovers her role as a pioneer of interior decorating in Romania and argues that the academy's showroom embodied the modernist aesthetics of Bucharest's avantgarde and, therefore, "resisted the pressure to adopt the historicist national style intended to soothe social anxieties within the changing landscape of post–First World War Romania" (26). The second part of the book explores the contribution of Yiddish theater companies and artists to the modernist performing arts scene in Romania. It first focuses on the Vilna Troupe's years in Bucharest and demonstrates its influence on the local experimental scene. Adopting the name Tragedy and Comedy, the company was established in Romania from 1923 to 1927. Chiriac shows how the plays performed by the company attracted the interest of the artistic scene in Bucharest, including the modernist playwright Eugene Ionesco. It also explores the multiple collaborations it developed with Romanian artists, such as Maxy, who produced stage designs and promotional materials for the troupe. The book then traces the theatrical legacy of the Vilna Troupe in Romania and analyzes the aesthetic continuities with local artists' productions, like Dida Solomon-Callimachi and Iacob Sternberg, and theater companies, such as the Bukarester Idishe Theater Studio. It thus demonstrates that experimental theater in Bucharest continued...