Xanti Schawinsky Would Have Loved the Internet

NO. 5 ˚7

Xanti Scha- winsky Head Dra- wings and Faces of War

BERGEN KUNSTHALL BERGEN KUNSTHALL Virtual space and war machines

Milena Hoegsberg December 2015

Xanti Schawinsky would have loved the Internet. Many of his the world imagined as a kind of mechanized stage—is itself most enticing architectural landscapes beg to be animated, a symbol for potential, for movement, for cause and effect. to be pushed into the virtual realm. As an artist who worked Similarly, the figures in The Robber Ballet (Three Gentlemen consistently across media he would have made the most of of Verona), dated 1925, appear enveloped in a non-space of the technical possibilities available today, and not least been saturated thick matt ink. Outfitted in white shirts and black fascinated by the critical synergy between art, architecture, ties that peek up from their otherwise mechanical bodies, the fashion, and design—artistic and commercial work—that three gentleman carry the numbers one, two, and three as if online platforms such as DIS Magazine exemplify. What is so to underscore their identity as prototypes. The pre-robotic striking about his practice, that spans much of the twentieth figures stand identical with prosthetic “stump” legs, with century, is exactly how contemporary large parts of it seem. pistols in hand, and round red circles in place of faces. Contemporary in the sense not just of a likeness to the aesthetic cross-currents of the present, but of a timeless It is then not entirely surprising that the objects in Faces of quality that is in part a result of his continuous exploration War are machines, “masked” so as to recall the human, and of a pictorial “non-space.” Born in 1904, he spent his early like their Bauhaus counterpoints revealing little about their twenties at the Bauhaus working primarily with the stage true nature. In The Gunner, from 1942, cannons become workshop. This tactile experience sparked his commitment eyes and nose in a face comprised of a helmet merged atop to the space of possibilities afforded by the stage to set a tank. In The Admiral from the same year, two portholes architectural elements, and sometimes figures, in motion. in a large navy ship make up eyes, while the beard is This interest in the dynamism of space as a catalyst to express comprised of frothy white waves, and a round life preserver ideas—outside concrete geographic location and time—never mouth accentuates a quirky facial expression of surprise. left him. The bizarreness of the humanized objects here seems to be a tool to emphasize the ambiguity of the backdrops in a “Space - time - matter and their visualization” is the title of colorful no man’s land. This sense of a dystopian non-space is an address Schawinsky made to the Art Squad in New York heightened in the 1945 work Architectural Design, in which a City in the mid 1940s and might easily stand as the ethos of circular highway leads through the mouth of a large cement his practice, developed from the early 1920s until his death head with hollow black eyes echoing Schawinsky’s Bauhaus in 1979. Throughout his life he remained faithful to the idea stage designs while introducing a much more menacing of an interdisciplinary approach, not beholden to hierarchies atmosphere. Defined by the possibilities of graphic design— between art, architecture, and commercial design work, but chromatic bands and hues spreading across the page—these constantly evolving artistically. landscapes have a “virtual” feel, bound not by nation-state or the specifics of a given military agenda or political situation.3 The Faces of War, a remarkable series made in the early Yet the works are undeniably and even radically laced with 1940s, emphasizes how Schawinsky built on his previous critical counterpoint to the politics of the Second World War. works, cross pollinating and repeating elements that had appeared in both his artistic and commercial work—an In Untitled (War face and child), a cut-out photo of a young ideological distinction he would not have made.1 Drawn with child, preoccupied with the glass of milk he is holding, is watercolor and black pen on paper, the works render military superimposed onto one of these landscapes. Pictorially the equipment and machinery—a helmet, a tank, a ship, and a child occupies a space of his own, underscoring just how parachute—into faces with colored camouflage blots, situated divorced these war machines are from everyday human life. It in hyper-real landscapes. is safe to assume that Schawinsky would have felt the anxiety of the war and that this series was an active processing of its The desolate backdrops recall in particular works made some impact. A Swiss Jew, raised in Basel, he had been forced to twenty years earlier during Xanti’s Bauhaus years. Unlike migrate first from Germany, where he studied and worked, his mentor Oskar Schlemmer, who was concerned with the to Italy for three years, then to the United States, where transformation of the human figure in space, Schawinsky was he acquired citizenship in 1939 and lived for close to three more interested in spatial composition as a catalyst for visual decades. In the years Schawinsky produced Faces of War possibilities in its own right.2 In a delicate tempera drawing, in New York, he also worked for the United States Army Air titled Entwurf to einen konstruktiven raumbuhne (Design Corps designing camouflage patterns, in addition to other for a constructive spatial stage), from 1926, a kind of Ferris commercial graphic design work.4 He would have experienced wheel architecture of loosely connected elements, sketched at close range the industrial optimism surrounding the boom in soft watercolors, floats seemingly waiting to be triggered in American military production in its efforts to “out-produce,” by a human agent who remains unseen. The architecture— in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, its enemies. The Faces of War series then emerges as a testament to the dehumanizing qualities of war. Unlike the playfully performative “war rigs”—greased by human blood—in George Miller’s apocalyptic 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road, Footnotes: Schawinsky’s war machines are by contrast cloaked by the 1 For an excellent essay that explores this synergy between absence of human agency in the face of objects turned Xanti’s commercial and artistic work, and also in relation to the human. In Soldier’s Rest (Faces of War), one of the tank heads Head Drawings on view at Bergen Kunsthall, see: Juliet Koss, has been split open revealing a classic portrait outline, the “Facing Design” in Xanti Schawinsky, Head Drawings and human signifier passively contained inside the machine. Faces of War, Drawing Papers 119 (New York: The Drawing Center, 2015), pp. 11–43. Drawing on a visual language closely related to the aesthetics of propaganda posters of the 1940s, Schawinsky’s Faces 2 See: Torsten Blume, “The Bauhaus Years,” in Xanti deliberately fail to deliver any clear message. Their sinister Schawinsky (Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst & JRP playfulness recalls the subversive charge of Dadaist anti-war Ringier, 2015), p. 22. responses to the devastation of the First World War, and also the robots in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis from 1927, particularly 3 Michael Bracewell characterizes it “a stateless yet the dystopian underbelly of technological optimism. The atmospheric space” - a “nowhere” place, in the essay machine aesthetic had been taken to an extreme in Hitler’s “Elegance and Doom: A Contemporary Perspective on the fantasy of the Übermensch. “Swift as greyhounds, tough as Drawings of Xanti Schawinsky” in Xanti Schawinsky Head leather, hard as Krupp steel” was his chilling description of Drawings and Faces of War, Drawing Papers 119 (New York: his aspirations for Hitler Jugend, underscoring the ambition The Drawing Center, 2015), p. 46. of the Nazis to dehumanize its youth and make them into unbreakable machines. In the shadow of this disturbing 4 See: Tobias Peper, “Biographical Notes” in Xanti Schawinsky rationale, Schawinsky’s work stimulates uncertainty and (Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst & JRP Ringier, 2015), reflection through ambiguity. The faces are playful yes, but p. 163. only inasmuch as they are making a mockery of war machines, in the same way that the three Veronese gentlemen, outfitted as clerks, seem to be poking fun at the bureaucrat while exploring the agency of geometric forms in space.

Schawinsky went on to produce numerous other bodies of work right up until the end of his life. It is interesting to speculate about what his response would have been to the world of today, specifically how our understanding of time and space is being rapidly reconfigured with the omnipresence of the digital realm and its impact on social relations, economics, politics, and resistance. How would he have responded to the military-industrial complex, and warfare enabled by sophisticated technology such as drones that allows visual, physical, and psychological distance from a target now appearing only as a pixilated image? More than eighty years after their production, Schawinsky’s humanized machines are still capable of raising questions that seem all too relevant about the impact of the technology we invent, and where that leaves us as human agents in a time when our humanity is consistently at risk. Xanti Schawinsky – Soldier’s Rest (Faces of War) Facsimile: The Drawing Center, Drawing Papers 119, Xanti Schawinsky – Head Drawings and Faces of War ENG XANTI SCHAWINSKY HEAD DRAWINGS AND FACES OF WAR

8 JANUARY – 28 FEBRUARY KUNSTHALLEN

Curated by Brett Littman

Alexander ‘Xanti’ Schawinsky was a first generation Bauhaus artist who studied in Weimar under Oskar Xanti Schawinsky was born 1904 in Basel, Switzer- Schlemmer, László Moholy-Nagy and Walter Gropius land, died 1979 in Locarno, Italy. during the late 1920s. Originally trained as an archi- tect, Schawinsky’s prolific work encompassed a range In NO.5 Bergen Kunsthall revisits selected artworks of social and political investigations, and included and exhibitions, previously presented elsewhere in painting, graphic design and experimental photog- the world. Initiated in response to the increasing raphy. He was also deeply engaged in the Bauhaus’ accelera tion of both the production and reception theater workshop, as a set and costume designer, of art, NO.5 provides an opportunity to slow down, creator of performances, actor and musician. focus on, and look again at particular works, exhibitions or fragments of exhibitions. “Xanti Schawinsky: A Swiss-born, Polish Jew, in 1936 he fled Nazi Germa- Head Drawings and Faces of War” was first shown at ny, moving briefly to Milan before joining Josef Albers The Drawing Center, NY, during fall 2014, curated by as a teacher at the Black Mountain College in North Brett Littman. For this exhibition Bergen Kunsthall has Carolina, and then settling in New York. commis sioned a new text by Milena Høgsberg.

This exhibition - which was originally presented at The Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War Drawing Center, New York in 2014 - focuses on two is made possible by the support of The Kind World bodies of work that Schawinsky made in the US be- Foundation, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, tween 1941 and 1946: “Faces of War” and the “Head Daniel Schawinsky and the Xanti Schawinsky Estate, Drawings”. and Fiona and Eric Rudin. Special thanks to Anke Kempkes and BROADWAY 1602. “Faces of War” is a series of Arcimboldo-like images of man-machine hybrids that might represent either RELATED EVENTS an aggressive enemy or a powerful avenger — or perhaps an identity that encompasses both. Made during OPENING the year that the US declared war on Germany, their 8 January, 8pm break from the utopian optimism of the early Bauhaus fascination with man and machine reveals the existen- GUIDED TOURS tial struggle of an artist coping with his own identity Every Sunday, 2pm and the devastation of the war. 7 January, 6pm – Members 10 January, 1pm – Families The “Head Drawings”, by contrast, appear more classical in nature, but they too evoke a powerful fragmentation of the subject. Schawinsky assembles his delicate trompe l’oeil portraits through various materials and matter, both man-made and natural - an attempt perhaps to reimagine and remake himself in the face of the shattering experiences of World War II. Exhibition Map No.5

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

12 1

11 2

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

1 Untitled (War Face and Child), 1942 13 Domestic, (Head Drawings), 1943-46 Gouache on paper, b&w photo cut out Graphite on paper 72.39 x 52.07 cm 86 x 64.3 x 3.8 cm 2 Untitled (Three Green War Faces), 1942 Courtesy of Beth Rudin DeWoody Gouache on paper 14 Medusa (Head Drawings), 1945 72.39 x 52.07 cm Graphite on paper 3 The General (Faces of War), 1942 78.74 x 55.88 cm Mixed media, watercolor and pen 15 Above the Waters (Head Drawings), 1944 80 x 60 cm Graphite on paper 4 The Soldier (Faces of War),1942 80.01 x 57.15 cm Mixed media, watercolor and black pen 16 Antique Shop (Head Drawings), 1945 72 x 52.6 cm Graphite on paper 5 The Enemy (Faces of War), 1942 78.74 x 57.15 cm Mixed media, watercolor and black pen on paper 17 The Soldier (Head Drawings), 1941-44 72.6 x 52.4 cm Graphite on paper 6 The Admiral (Faces of War), 1942 78.74 x 52.07 cm Mixed media, watercolor and black pen on paper 18 Head Drawings (1208), 1945 74.6 x 54.4 cm Pencil on paper 7 The Gunner (Faces of War), 1942 77.98 x 57.15 cm Mixed technique, aqueous and black pen 19 Head Drawings (Artwork for print), 1943 73 x 53.6 cm Pencil on paper 8 Untitled (War 1169), 1942 77.98 x 57.91 cm Mixed technique, aqueous and pen 20 Water Man (Head Drawings), 1945 80 x 60 cm Graphite on paper 9 The Parachutist (Faces of War), 1942 78.74 x 57.15 cm Mixed media, watercolor and black pen 21 Laundry Man (Head Drawings), 1944 74.2 x 53.3 cm Graphite on paper 10 Architectural Design, 1945 78.74 x 57.15 cm Mixed media, water color and black pen 22 Rope Head (Head Drawings), 1944 52.7 x 73.4 cm Graphite on paper 11 Crystal Head (Head Drawings), 1943 78.74 x 55.88 cm Graphite on paper 23 Sewing Hour (Head Drawings), 1941 78.74 x 57.15 cm Graphite on paper 12 Euclidian (Head Drawings), 1945 77.47 x 55.88 cm Graphite on paper 80.01 x 58.42 cm Courtesy of The Xanti Schawinsky Estate unless noted otherwise. Installation view, Bergen Kunsthall NO. 5, 2016 Installation view, Bergen Kunsthall NO. 5, 2016 Installation view, Bergen Kunsthall NO. 5, 2016 Installation view, Bergen Kunsthall NO. 5, 2016 Installation view, Bergen Kunsthall NO. 5, 2016 Installation view, Bergen Kunsthall NO. 5, 2016 Installation view, Bergen Kunsthall NO. 5, 2016 Installation view, Bergen Kunsthall NO. 5, 2016 Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War September 19–December 14, 2014

Drawing Room Opening Reception: Thursday, September 18, 6–8pm

For further information and images, please contact Molly Gross, Communications Director, The Drawing Center 212 219 2166 x119 | [email protected]

September 18, 2014

New York – The Drawing Center presents Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War, a look at first generation Bauhaus artist Alexander ‘Xanti’ Schawinsky’s prolific oeuvre, which encompasses a range of social and political investigations. Schawinsky played a key role in the school's vital social life and was a member of the Bauhaus Band. He studied graphic design and experimental photography and was also deeply engaged in the Bauhaus's theater workshop as an actor, set and costume designer, creator of performances, and teacher.

The exhibition at The Drawing Center focuses on two bodies of work Schawinsky made between Xanti Schawinsky , The 1941 and 1946, Faces of War and the Head Drawings. The former are man-machine hybrids that Warrior (Faces of War), 1942 , Mixed media, could represent either an aggressive enemy or a powerful avenger—or perhaps an identity that watercolor, and black pen on paper, 29 x 21 3/8 encompasses both. The Faces of War break from the utopian optimism of the early Bauhaus and inches (73.7 x 54.2 cm), reveal the existential struggle of an artist coping with identity and the devastation of war. The Head Copyright and courtesy of The Estate of Xanti Drawings allowed Schawinsky to literally remake his own “portrait” out of such detritus of the Schawinsky, Switzerland. natural world as thread, crystals, rope, and rocks.

ABOUT XANTI SCHAWINSKY The son of Polish Jews, Alexander (“Xanti”) Schawinsky was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1904. In 1924, he enrolled at the Bauhaus, placing him in contact with legendary figures such as Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, and László Moholy- Nagy.Starting in the late 1920s, he took on a series of independent exhibition and commercial design commissions, but—fleeing fascism—Schawinsky left Germany in 1933, for Italy, where he

used his talents as a graphic designer to create advertising for a variety of companies including Illy Caffe, Cinzano, Olivetti, and Motta. As Mussolini's ties with Hitler strengthened, Schawinsky emigrated once more—to the United States and Black Mountain College, in North Carolina, in 1936, where Josef Albers had invited him to teach drawing, color theory, and stage design. In 1938, Schawinsky settled in New York City, where he remained until 1966, working as a teacher, an exhibition and graphic designer, a sculptor, and a photographer. That year, Schawinsky relocated to Laggio Maggiore, Italy. He died in Locarno, Switzerland, in 1979.

In 1938 Schawinsky was included in the seminal Museum of Modern Art, New York, exhibition Bauhaus 1919–1928. During the 1940s and 50s, humankind, in all its deformation and fantastic transformation, became Schawinsky‘s major topic. His work was shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the next decades, including, in 1986, the first Xanti Schawinsky retrospective, held by the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Thursday, October 30 at 6:30pm An evening walkthrough of Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War with Brett Littman, curator and Executive Director of The Drawing Center.

PUBLICATION The 120-page edition of the Drawing Papers series in conjunction with this exhibition includes an introduction by Brett Littman, curator and Executive Director of The Drawing Center as well as essays by UK based cultural critic Michael Bracewell and art historian Juliet Koss.

CREDITS Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War is made possible by the support of The Kind World Foundation, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Daniel Schawinsky and the Xanti Schawinsky Estate, and Fiona and Eric Rudin.

Special thanks to Anke Kempkes and BROADWAY 1602.

ABOUT THE DRAWING CENTER The Drawing Center is the only not-for-profit fine arts institution in the country to focus solely on the exhibition of drawings, both historical and contemporary. It was established in 1977 to provide opportunities for emerging and under-recognized artists; to demonstrate the significance and diversity of drawings throughout history; and to stimulate public dialogue on issues of art and culture.

Installation view, The Drawing Center, 2014. Courtesy of the Xanti Schawinsky Estate. Photo: Jose Andres Ramirez

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AT THE DRAWING CENTER Thread Lines September 19–December 14, 2014 Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War September 19–December 14, 2014 Sari Dienes October 8–November 16, 2014 Open Sessions 2 November 21–December 14, 2014 Tomi Ungerer: All in One January 9–March 22, 2015 Abdelkader Benchamma: Representation of Dark Matter March 2015–2016 Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts Paris April 10–June 28, 2015 Natalie Frank: The Brothers Grimm April 10–June 28, 2015 Open Sessions 3 April 10–May 15, 2015 İnci Eviner May 29–June 28, 2015

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Installation view, The Drawing Center, 2014. Courtesy of the Xanti Schawinsky Estate. Photo: Jose Andres Ramirez Installation view, The Drawing Center, 2014. Courtesy of the Xanti Schawinsky Estate. Photo: Jose Andres Ramirez Installation view, The Drawing Center, 2014. Courtesy of the Xanti Schawinsky Estate. Photo: Jose Andres Ramirez Installation view, The Drawing Center, 2014. Courtesy of the Xanti Schawinsky Estate. Photo: Jose Andres Ramirez Facsimile: The Drawing Center, Drawing Papers 119, Xanti Schawinsky – Head Drawings and Faces of War Facsimile: The Drawing Center, Drawing Papers 119, Xanti Schawinsky – Head Drawings and Faces of War Facsimile: The Drawing Center, Drawing Papers 119, Xanti Schawinsky – Head Drawings and Faces of War Facsimile: The Drawing Center, Drawing Papers 119, Xanti Schawinsky – Head Drawings and Faces of War

XANTI SCHAWINSKY: HEAD DRAWINGS AND FACES OF WAR The Drawing Center, New York, NY XANTI SCHAWINSKY: ECLIPSE Broadway 1602, New York, NY Xanti Schawinsky was the life of the party. As a student at the Bauhaus school from 1924 to 1929, he played sax in the jazz band, danced on the roof of the student dorms, and competed vigorously on the athletic field. Hamming it up for the lens of photographers like Lux Feininger, Schawinsky was as close to a mascot as the Bauhaus had, demolishing any impression of white-walled auster- ity at the 20th century’s most famous art school. He was also a model polymath at an institution full of them, pro- ducing theater works and stage sets in addition to painting, graphic design, exhibition design, and photography. The party ended in 1933. Already chased from its first two homes in Weimar and Dessau by conservative neighbors, the Bauhaus was stormed by police in Berlin, suggest the dark side of the Bauhaus’s techno-utopian less monumental. The works in Faces of War are expertly who detained many of its students before the school vision: from 1923, the school pledged “a new unity” of constructed optical illusions that flicker between part closed for good under pressure from a newly elected art and technology and sought industrial sponsorship and whole, at once decorated and dissolved by colorful Nazi government. By that time Schawinsky was teaching to mass produce its designs; in the theater workshop, accents of dazzle camouflage (Schawinsky had worked and practicing graphic design elsewhere in Germany, but Schawinsky’s mentor Oskar Schlemmer explored man- with the Army Air Corps’ “Visual Problems Unit” in the as a Swiss-born Polish Jew, his double-otherness made machine hybrids, while his colleague Kurt Schmidt’s 1940s to design anti-aircraft-targeting patterns). The work increasingly hard to come by. He fled to Milan, Mechanical Ballet is the herky-jerky urform of “doing the Drawing Center presentation makes this illusionistic con- where he designed campaigns for brands such as Illy, robot.” Faces of War appears as a chilling testament to text clear by showing the artist’s Head Drawings on the REVIEWS Cinzano, and Olivetti before Italy’s alliance with Germany man’s industrialized self-destruction, and perhaps the facing wall. They were produced concurrently with Faces prompted him to leave again, this time for America. At most explicitly political work to come out of the Bauhaus. of War (1941–1946), and show the wit and virtuosity Josef Albers’ behest he taught briefly at Black Mountain But Schawinsky’s heads are also Janus-faced. of their draftsman: Jewelry Head forms a face from a College in North Carolina, then settled in New York, Though all are menacing, the armor of one defends a constellation of baubles draped over an extended hand; where he would live and work off and on until his death city of gleaming high-rises and august, pedimented Rope Head reveals a profile in its loops and whorls; and in 1979. institutions, while another protects a classically ideal- Laundry Man is an expert drapery study from which a It’s therefore appropriate that New York is the site of ized human head. As Drawing Center Executive Director bearded man’s face emerges. The most serious of them, two concurrent exhibitions demonstrating Schawinsky’s Brett Littman, the show’s curator, notes in his introduc- Lumber Room, reveals a complex space frame inside a extraordinary range, the vibrancy of his émigré years, tion to the publication, the faces “could represent either cutaway of a lifelike head, suggesting the rational archi- and his complicated politics: Head Drawings and Faces an aggressive enemy or a powerful avenger—or per- tecture of the psyche—but is also the most clichéd of War [September 19–December 14, 2014] at the haps an identity that encompasses both.” Although it’s for this fact. The Head Drawings series is peculiar and Drawing Center, and Eclipse [September 16–November unclear exactly when in 1942 these works were made, delightful, but not within the same world-historical regis- 22, 2014] at Broadway 1602. They are part of an inter- in that year the US had declared war on Germany, which ter as their combative counterparts. national rediscovery of the artist’s work that includes began its continental takeover with Schawinsky’s ances- The motifs of all these pictures are familiar from retrospectives in Zurich and St. Petersburg next year; tral homeland, and news of mass extermination was Schawinsky’s student days: within the bastion of abstrac- a group show in Boston about Black Mountain College; spreading among the Allies. Schawinsky, who had idol- tion that was the Bauhaus, he continuously explored one focused on the Bauhaus stage that will tour Europe, ized America since the time he imported jazz records human physiognomy, decomposing and recomposing Asia, and the US; and three forthcoming publications. to Weimar, would probably have welcomed the avenger. the figure, if perhaps without Schlemmer’s profound Schawinsky’s last retrospective was in Berlin in 1986, The stateless faces might be archetypes represent- psychospiritual fascination. Many of Schawinsky’s pic- and his family-estate-owned oeuvre has been tucked ing the inexorability of conflict for any nation armed and tures featured floating forms, classical elements, and away in Swiss vaults since then for reasons unclear. But braced for it—portraits of the war machine embodied. echoes of surrealism and metaphysical painting—motifs the most important Bauhäusler you’ve never heard of is Just as Schlemmer’s costumes dictated the dancer’s he shared with his friend and colleague Herbert Bayer. finally getting his due. movements on the stage, and the form of Josef Hartwig’s While in Milan, Schawinsky had used a similar part- Faces of War, executed in 1942, is a series of iconic Bauhaus chess pieces communicated their func- whole figurative composition in an infamous poster he Arcimboldo-style portraits made of modern military mate- tion on the board, Faces of War suggests that military designed to celebrate the 12th anniversary of Mussolini’s riel instead of fruits and vegetables. In these poster-scale buildup is deterministic, and human agency is immobi- rule in 1934: in this photomontage, the tiny heads of ink drawings, armored humanoid heads with gun turrets lized in a state of mobilization. an assembled mass form the texture of il Duce’s coat. for eyes and tank treads for feet float on a watercolor Whatever the interpretation, the work fits neatly within Having fled fascism, Schawinsky began advertising it gradient backdrop. At first blush, the monstrous heads Schawinsky’s formal trajectory in ways that make it seem elsewhere. Incidentally, Bayer was doing something

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: Xanti Schawinsky, The Warrior (Faces of War), 1942, mixed media, watercolor, and black pen on paper, 29 x 21.375 inches; Xanti Schawinsky, The Admiral (Faces of War), 1942, mixed media, watercolor, and black pen on paper, 29.375 x 21.375 inches (images © and courtesy of The Estate of Xanti Schawinsky, Switzerland)

56 ART PAPERS ECLIPSE, “REVIEW”, BY ALEX KITBICK, ARTFORUM MAGAZINE, PAGE 307, DECEMBER 2014

PG 307

BROADWAY 1602 ARTIST PRESS

XANTI SCHAWINKSKY, “THE FORGOTTEN MAN OF BAUHAUS, ALMOST,” WRITTEN BY ALICE RAWSTHORN, PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, MARCH 19, 2015, PAGE F2, PRINT

1181 BROADWAY FLOOR 3 NEW YORK NY 10001 T+1 212 481 0362 www.broadway1602.com [email protected] Pg F2

Published by Bergen Kunsthall on the occasion of the exhibition:

Faces of War and Head Drawings Xanti Schawinsky Bergen Kunsthall, NO.5 8 January—28 February 2016

This exhibition was originally presented at The Drawing Center, New York in 2014, and focuses on two bodies of work that Schawinsky made in the US In NO.5 Bergen Kunsthall revisits Inbetween NO.5 Bergen1941 and Kunsthall 1946: Faces revisits of War selected artworks and exhibitions, selectedand the Head artworks Drawings. and exhibitions, previously presented elsewhere in previously presented elsewhere in Text the world. Initiated in response to Milenathe world. Hoegsberg Initiated in response to the increasing acceleration of both the increasing acceleration of both the production and reception of theEditors production and reception of art, NO.5 provides an opportunity art,Bergen NO.5 Kunsthall provides an opportunity to slow down, focus on, and look to slow down, focus on, and look Proof reading again at particular works, exhibitions Bergenagain at Kunsthall particular works, exhibitions or fragments of exhibitions. Bergen or fragments of exhibitions. Bergen Kunsthall will commission a new KunsthallDesign will commission a new critical text to accompany each of criticalBlank Blank text to accompany each of these re-presentations. The text will these re-presentations. The text will Photo appear in a publication series that Andreasappear in Hadsel a publication Opsvik, series that is avalable online as a pdf and as a Bergenis avalable Kunsthall online as a pdf and as a printed copy in our bookshop INK. printedJose Andres copy Ramirez, in our bookshop The Drawing INK. Center

Acknowledgements Xanti Schawinsky: Head Drawings and Faces of War is made possible by the support of The Kind World Founda- tion, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helve- tia, Daniel Schawinsky and the Xanti Schawinsky Estate, and Fiona and Eric Rudin. Special thanks to The Drawing Center, especially Brett Littman and Olga Valle Tetkowski and BROADWAY 1602 especially Anke Kempkes. We would like to thank Milena Hoegsberg for her new text for this publication and the writers who have contributed in the facsimiles of archive material. Finally we would like to thank Bergen Kunsthalls sponsors and funding partners.

Printing Bergen Kunsthall

Every attempt has been made to secure the rights to reproduce the images and texts that appear in this publication. However, if any have been inadvertently overlooked, please contact the Bergen Kunsthall.

ISBN: 978-82-93101-31-4

Rasmus Meyers allé 5, N-5015 Bergen, Norway +47 55559310, [email protected] www.kunsthall.no

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