Ich bin nicht ein Berliner: A Reconsideration of Marsden Hartley's Portrait of a German Officer Sean Kramer (FacultyAdvisor: Marni Kessler) Art History Figure I7 8artley9 Marsden7 Portrait of a German Officer. Alfred ;tie<lit= >ollection7 Metro?olitan Museum of Art9 New York. 236 German Officer with a formal analysis of This painting, executed in November 1914, the painting. I then use semiotic theory to shows Hartley's assimilation of both Cubism begin to unpack notions of a singular, (the collagelike juxtapositions of visual fragments) and German Expressionism (the "correct" interpretation of the painting coarse brushwork and dramatic use of bright and to emphasize the multiform nature of colors and black). In 1916 the artist denied that reception. In this section, I seek to the objects in the painting had any special establish that the artist's personal meaning (perhaps as a defensive measure to connection to the artwork is not ward off any attacks provoked by the intense anti-German sentiment in America at the time). necessarily the most important However, his purposeful inclusion of medals, interpretive guideline for working with banners, military insignia, the Iron Cross, and this image. I then use examples of letters the German imperial flag does invoke a specific and numerals within the work to sense of Germany during World War I as well illustrate the plurality of cultural and as a collective psychological and physical linguistic processes which inform portrait of a particular officer.1 viewership of the painting. Meanings in a text, I posit, rely on the interaction between the contexts of the viewer and of This quotation comes from a section the author. These meanings consequently of the description that accompanies an change as we pass from the creation of image of Marsden Hartley's Portrait of a the work of art to the contemporary German Officer from late 1914 (fig. 1) on consumer—i.e. the viewer. Still, semiotics the Metropolitan Museum of Art's official often only concerns itself with a specific, website. I use this description here ideal viewer and for that reason the because to me it represents a tendency in theory only allows for a finite number of recent scholarship to privilege the artist's interpretations. (Marsden Hartley's) biography as well as a precise historic moment (the beginning I conclude with a postmodern months of World War I) in interpretations analysis, as I feel such an analysis of this painting.2 My main purpose is not addresses the discordant, almost to critique scholarship but rather to cacophonous interplay of meanings which reopen the potential for exploring Hartley's Portrait visually suggests. meaning within the painting that Postmodernism, in many ways, deals with biographical and socio-historic readings the processing and reprocessing of might otherwise overlook. sources, imagery, and borrowed material on all levels of consciousness. Therefore, I I begin my own reading of Portrait of a examine Hartley's quotations from preexisting visual sources and his "Portrait of a German Officer" Metropolitan engagement with various forms of Museum of Art, accessed April 5, 2012, spectacle in pre-Great War Berlin as seen http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the- in Portrait of a German Officer. Finally, I collections/210008711. consider the fragmented (literally and 2 Throughout this essay, I refer mainly to the work of metaphorically) subject of the painting a handful of art historians, namely, Bruce Robertson, William H. Robinson, Patricia McDonnell, Jonathan and complicate the neat, one-on-one Weinberg, and Donna Cassidy. These historians, associations which scholars often make however, also note the work of others which I feel between the objects represented on the compelled to mention. These include, but are not canvas and a specific person in Hartley's limited to, Gail R. Scott, Barbara Haskell, and Townsend Ludington. life. 237 Formal Analysis regions of the background hold these Marsden Hartley's Portrait of a shapes tightly in check. German Officer conveys an intricate Other rectilinear objects mirror the complexity which I find simultaneously overall erectness of the painting. In the chaotic and ordered. The main top half of the painting, three narrow bars composition hangs in front of a of alternating black and white each recall decontextualized, though highly textural this linear quality. So too, do the long, black void. The background is essentially narrow shapes that are reminiscent of little more than two long regions of poles and spikes which frame the semi¬ scumbled dark paint on either side of the circle at the very top of the canvas.3 As my canvas. These dark regions of paint only eye travels downward toward the center, give a limited sense of space, an effect I see two narrow and elongated which adds to the cramped and rectangular shapes below a large triangle overcrowded atmosphere of the painting. which also repeat this motif. To the left of The shapes and images in the painting these shapes is another long, thin sliver of likewise are bunched up toward a central, gold which mirrors the left edge of the vertical axis. This axis follows a white line canvas. Just below, another narrow strip from the top center of the painting of gold outlines a path toward the bottom through the vertical bar of a black cross center of the canvas, though this band is directly below; it then traces the outline interrupted by the red, white, and black of of two rectangular shapes which contain an intersecting horizontal flag. Just to the numbers; it later becomes muddled in right of this flag-image, a narrow shaft overlying flag shapes but finally rejoins latticed in white ends in a bulbous, the image along the border of a white- rounded form and suggests a phallus. and-red cross image at the bottom center Two other white forms also near the of the canvas. The arrangement of shapes bottom right corner share the same along the left and right margins of the phallic suggestion. The artist repeats this composition conform to the confines of motif directly above in the red and gold the canvas edges and further emphasizes protrusion emanating from an ambiguous this same verticality. While the green, red, and white circle. 4 While to me establishment of this axis gives the these are the most identifiable references painting a clearly upward orientation, the to linear, phallic imagery in the painting, composition is still overwhelming. The erect orientation of the image nevertheless endows the painting with a Bruce Robertson identifies these shapes as lances sense of a stately vigor that works against while William H. Robinson reasons that they may the otherwise riotous, constrained refer to the pickhelhaubes on the helmets of German soldiers during the First World War. See Robertson, confusion. In fact, I see a sort of imposed Bruce, Marsden Hartley, New York: Harry N. order upon the shapes within the Abrams, Inc., 1995, page 56, and Robinson, William composition. It appears as though the H., "Marsden Hartley's Military," The Bulletin of the images and shapes struggle to break free Cleveland Museum of Art 76 (1989): 14. 4 This motif recalls an interesting statement of from the boundaries of the picture plane Marsden Hartley's: "It was the smell of leather made yet are contained within the painting a man of him. Stiffened his spine, gave him the against their will. Only at the top and orgiastic sense of being without which nothing barely at the bottom do the forms seem to happens, and with which all is as it should be. No one can get through anything being soft all the time." escape. In all other sectors the dark Quoted in Robertson, Marsden Hartley, 63-64. 238 horizontal bands of white and various flag-image in the top half of the painting colors used to render flags also repeat a appears positioned behind other horizontal configuration, which intersects rectangular shapes, yet the viewer cannot the vertical one I have already described. accept—given the undulating manner of The intersection of these two directional its representation—that this flag is lying arrangements further forms a cross-like flatly. The image which these curving bars schema that visually mirrors the actual evoke quite naturally recalls a banner depicted Iron Cross which dominates the flapping in the wind, which contradicts composition. the static nature of the other elements in The painting confounds any sense of the immediate vicinity. The rectangular three-dimensionality and many of the shapes which foreground this waving flag, shapes even seem to compete for the on the other hand, appear motionless and same level on the picture plane. The black seem either to sit on top of the flag (which background is mainly visible only along as we have already seen is impossible) or the peripheral edges. As a result, the to hang at an undefined distance in front painting is in a way suffocating. The of it. This second option is equally black-and-white alternating squares confusing to the eye as the two regions do which form a checker pattern along the appear to be directly touching. As a result, edges dissolve at times into the black area space in this region of the painting of the background, further making remains uncertain. The other flag-image ambiguous any sense of separation toward the lower half of the painting (this among the planes. To a large extent, the one red, white, and black) also repetition of black within the shapes in complicates the spatial arrangement of the foreground confuses a stable reading the overall painting for it does not exhibit of the large regions of black along the any of the same waving characteristics as outer edges of the painting.