Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2014 Realism to Surrealism: European art and culture 1848-1936
The bitter creativity of art and culture in Weimar Germany Dr Jacqueline Strecker 17/18 September 2014
Lecture summary:
This lecture explores many of the iconic images we associate with the art and culture of Berlin in the 1920s which represent both the will to modernity – all that was hopeful and exciting about the modern age – and a fear of the modern – that which was dysfunctional and uncertain. The brilliant yet sinister images produced by Germany’s leading post-war generation of artists during the years of the Weimar Republic (1918-33) were characterised by what Eric Hobsbawm has described as a sense of ‘bitter creativity’. Through an analysis of Dada photomontages by Hannah Höch, Max Ernst and George Grosz as well as realist paintings by Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and Christian Schad, I will argue that artists expressed an ambivalent view towards modernity that challenged the seductive and enduring myth of the ‘golden twenties’ as a period of glittering decadence.
Slide list:
Max Beckmann, The synagogue in Frankfurt am Main, 1919, oil on canvas, 90 x 140cm, Städel Museum, Frankfurt
*Max Beckmann, The night, 1918-19, oil on canvas, 133 x 154cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein- Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Otto Dix, The matchbox seller I, 1920, oil and collage on canvas, 141 x 166cm, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
*Otto Dix, Skat players, 1920, oil and collage on canvas, 110 x 87cm, New National Gallery, Berlin
George Grosz, Tatlinesque diagram, 1920, watercolour with photomontage, 41 x 29.2cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornesmisza, Madrid
George Grosz, “Daum” marries her pedantic automaton “George” in May 1920, John Heartfield is very glad of it, 1920, watercolour with photomontage, 42 x 30.2cm, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
Hannah Höch, Cut with the kitchen knife Dada through the last Weimar beer belly cultural epoch in Germany, 1919-20, photomontage, 114 x 90cm, New National Gallery, Berlin
Max Ernst, The punching ball or the Immortality of Buonarroti, 1920, photomontage, 17.6 x 11.4cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Otto Dix, To beauty, 1922, oil and collage on canvas, 140 x 122.2cm, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal
Max Beckmann, Dance in Baden-Baden, 1923, oil on canvas, 108 x 66cm, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
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Max Beckmann, The trapeze, 1923, oil on canvas, 196.5 x 84cm, Toledo Museum of Art
George Grosz, Beauty, let me praise thee, 1922-23, lithograph, 35 x 26cm, various collections
Otto Dix, Exotic bordello, 1922, watercolour, 48.5 x 39.5cm, private collection
Otto Dix, Three prostitutes on the street, 1925, oil and tempera on plywood, 95 x 100cm, private collection
Otto Dix, Three wenches, 1926, oil and tempera on plywood, 181 x 105.5cm, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
Otto Dix, Cartoon for Three wenches, 1926, charcoal, pencil, white gouache and wash, 180 x 100cm, private collection
*Otto Dix, Metropolis, 1928, oil and tempera on wood, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
George Grosz, Pillars of society, 1926, oil on canvas, 200 x 108cm, New National Gallery, Berlin
George Grosz, The writer Max Herrmann-Neisse, 1925, oil on canvas, 100 x 101cm, Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim
*Otto Dix, The Journalist Sylvia von Harden, 1926, oil and tempera on wood, 120 x 80cm, Pompidou Centre, Paris
Otto Dix, The dancer Anita Berber, 1925, oil and tempera on wood, 120 x 65cm, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
Christian Schad, Sonja, 1928, oil on canvas, 90 x 60cm, New National Gallery, Berlin
Max Beckmann, Self-portrait in tuxedo, 1927, oil on canvas, 141 x 96cm, Harvard University Art Museums
Christian Schad, Count St Genois d’Anneaucourt 1927, oil on wood, 86 x 63cm, Pompidou Centre, Paris
Christian Schad, Agosta the “Winged One” and Rasha the “Black Dove”, 1929, oil on canvas, 120 x 80cm, private collection
Max Beckmann, Self-portrait in tails, 1937, oil on canvas, 192.5 x 89cm, The Art Institute of Chicago
Max Beckmann, Mother and daughter, 1946, oil on canvas, 172.4 x 102.9cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales
References:
Hobsbawm, Eric, ‘Diary: Memories of Weimar’ in The mad square catalogue, pp.15-18 Metzger, Rainer, Berlin in the 20s, Thames & Hudson, London, 2007 Michalski, Sergiusz, New Objectivity: painting, graphic art and photography in Weimar Germany 1919-1933, Taschen, Cologne, 1994 Rewald, Sabine, Glitter and doom: German portraits from the 1920s, exhib cat, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 14 Nov 2006 – 19 Feb 2007 Strecker, Jacqueline, The mad square: modernity in German art 1910-37, exhib cat, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 6 Aug – 6 Nov 2011, National Gallery of Victoria, 25 Nov 2011 – 4 March 2012 Weitz, Eric, Weimar Germany: promise and tragedy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007 Images:
Max Beckmann, The night, 1918-19, oil on canvas, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Otto Dix, Skat players, 1920, oil and collage on canvas, New National Gallery, Berlin
Otto Dix, Metropolis, 1928, oil and tempera on wood, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
Otto Dix, The Journalist Sylvia von Harden, 1926, oil and tempera on wood, Pompidou Centre, Paris