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Book Review

Book Review: “A Subversive Gleam: Max Bill and His Time 1908-1939”

Review by William Kherbek

Going forward, Collecteurs will feature a monthly book review focusing on a recent release by the publishing arms of leading galleries and other art publishers from across the world. This is the first installment in our Book Reviews series.

Max Bill on his first visit to Paris, for the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, ca. May 1925.

Max Bill’s multifaceted creative practice is extensively chronicled in Angela Thomas’ book A Subversive Gleam. The work traces Bill’s life from before his birth, telling the story of his forebears in Switzerland, and follows Bill’s artistic development to the beginning of the Second World War. Thomas, who was married to Bill until his death in 1994, has an insider’s knowledge of her subject, and presents a book that is vast in both scope and scale. This volume of Thomas’ monograph is covers less than half of Bill’s lengthy life and it runs to nearly 700 pages.

The book will, of course, be a must-read for Bill-ists, but readers who are unfamiliar with this most plastic of plastic artists shouldn’t be deterred by the Thomas’ tome’s massive size.

From left to right: 1. Max Bill Kontinuität, 1946/1982. 2. Max Bill Sheet from the series fünfzehn variationen über ein thema, 1935–38. 3. Max Bill  Konstruktion auf der formel a2 + b2 = c2, 1937. © 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich. Collection of Angela Thomas, Zumikon. Courtesy the Max Bill Georges Vantongerloo Foundation and Hauser & Wirth.

A Subversive Gleam is a surprisingly fast-paced read. I found myself covering more than 200 pages in a single day, and that has less to do with my speed reading skills and more to do with the fluid, somewhat episodic approach Thomas uses, pulling vignettes from Bill and his associates’ lives rather than seeking to construct a specific argument about Bill to prove a thesis. Those who are looking for a life story with the emphasis on ‘story’ might find A Subversive Gleam something of a choppy read, but Thomas’ snapshots, for me, add up to a convincingly rounded portrait of the intellectual formation of a giant of twentieth century art and architecture.  The book is also notable for highlighting Bill’s political commitments. Modernism is often seen as agnostic politically, but Bill and the other intellectuals behind the leftist journal information, published during Germany’s fervid interwar period, offer an example of how artistic and political commitments can mesh.

Max Bill (with a full head of wavy hair) training as a silversmith at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Zurich, 1925–26. Book photography: Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Publishers

A Subversive Gleam is available from Hauser and Wirth

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