The Danish architectural magazine Kritisk Revy (1926–1929) occupies an important
position in Scandinavian avant-garde culture of the interwar period. Edited by a group
of young architects and left-wing intellectuals, the magazine served as an ideological
platform for early Scandinavian modernism in architecture and design. As such the
magazine may also be regarded as an early stage in the emergence and construction of
the notion of “Scandinavian Design”. Kritisk Revy’s leading concept of “humane art, art
for society’s sake” was formulated in an on-going dialogue with contemporary currents
and positions in international modernism and the avant-garde such as Le Corbusier,
Russian constructivism and the German Bauhaus School. As part of its strategy of pro
moting a modern ‘democratic’ or ’classless’ culture to replace traditional styles and
genres of bourgeois culture, the magazine embraced a wide range of modern topics
and phenomena – from advertising and shop window design to jazz music, variety
theatre and film. This article analyses how Kritisk Revy’s vision of cultural modernity
was developed as a response to the two apparently opposing phenomena of cultural
modernity, the artistic avant-gardes on the one hand and capitalist popular and com
modity culture on the other.