Otto Dix fought in the First World War for four years before becoming one of the most important artists of the Weimar era. This book takes Dix's very public, monumental works out of the isolation of the artist's studio and returns them to a context of public memorials, mass media depictions, and the communal search for meaning in the war.
This is the first publication to illuminate Neue Sachlichkeit against the backdrop of the Weimar Republic and National Socialism. Dix's works--including the key Metropolis triptych (1928-29), the great psychological portraits, and, last but not least, the landscapes with their hidden symbolism, painted during the years he spent at Lake Constance--form the starting point for this exploration of his oeuvre. They are placed in a context with works of art by George Grosz, Rudolf Schlichter, and Christian Schad, creating a new perspective on this crucial chapter in German art history.
Between 1871 and 1919, the population of Berlin quadrupled and the city became the political center of Germany, as well as the turbulent crossroads of the modern age. This was reflected in the work of artists, directors, writers and critics of the time. As an imperial capital, Berlin was the site of violent political revolution and radical aesthetic innovation. After the German defeat in World War I, artists employed collage to challenge traditional concepts of art. Berlin Dadaists reflected upon the horrors of war and the terrors of revolution and civil war. Between 1924 and 1929, jazz, posters, magazines, advertisements and cinema played a central role in the development of Berlin's urban experience as the spirit of modernity took hold. The concept of the Neue Frau -the modern, emancipated woman-helped move the city in a new direction. Finally, Berlin became a stage for political confrontation between the left and the right and was deeply affected by the economic crisis and mass unemployment at the end of the 1920s. This book explores in numerous essays and illustrations the artistic, cultural and social upheavals in Berlin between 1918 and 1933 and places them in a broader historical framework.
<I>Bitter Witness is an intensive, factual study of Otto Dix's war-related art. It is the first book to place Dix's etching cycle, <I>Der Krieg, alongside numerous paintings and drawings in the perspective of his war experience on two fronts from mid-1915 to 1918's finale. It includes a full history of the war, the Weimar Republic's socio-political upheavals, and the Nazi years, following Dix and his colleagues, including Kaethe Kollwitz, through the artistic movements and events in the first half of Germany's most turbulent century.
Primitivism versus modernity: the expressionist dilemma - Politics of primitivism - Brucke bathers: back to nature - Max Pechstein's visionary ideas - Emil Nolded.
From the glamour of the Golden Twenties to the depths of the dark side of a world undergoing rapid change - the penetrating content of works by more than 60 artists recreates the age of the Weimar Republic, big - city life and the entertainment scene as well as the consequences of the First World War and socially controversial topics such as prostitution, political struggle and social tensions. As the first German democracy, the Weimar Republic (1918 - 1933) is regarded as a time of crisis and transition - from the German Empire to the totalitarian regime of National Socialism. Numerous artists not only portrayed these years in their realistic representations, which are ironical and grotesque as well as critical - analytical; they also aimed to comment on the stat us quo and bring about social change. Works from Otto Dix and George Grosz via Conrad Felixmuller and Christian Schad to Dodo, Jeanne Mammen, Elfriede Lohse - Wachtler, famous artists and others waiting to be rediscovered, paint a multi - layered and political picture of the Weimar Republic.
This book examines the confrontational war pictures of Otto Dix (18911969) and explores their role in shaping the memory of World War I in Germany from 1914 to 1936. Dix's thirty-eight months on the World War I battlefields profoundly influenced his post-war artistic career, saw him produce some of the most enduring images of the conflict and establish himself as one of Europe's leading modernists. Offering substantial new research and presenting numerous primary sources to an English readership for the first time, the book examines Dix's war pictures within the broader visual culture of war in order to assess how they functioned alternatively as cutting-edge modernist art and transgressive war commemoration. Each chapter provides a case study of the first public display of one or more of Dix's war pictures at key exhibitions and explores how their reception was subjected to changing socio-political and cultural conditions as well as divergent attitudes to the lost war. Bringing a unique perspective and original scholarship to Dix's war works, this book is essential reading for art historians of World War I and the visual culture of Weimar Germany.
