New Objectivity
The New Objectivity (in
Although principally describing a tendency in German painting, the term took a life of its own and came to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it. Rather than some goal of philosophical objectivity, it was meant to imply a turn towards practical engagement with the world—an all-business attitude, understood by Germans as intrinsically American.[1]
The movement essentially ended in 1933 with the end of the
Meaning
Although "New Objectivity" has been the most common translation of "Neue Sachlichkeit", other translations have included "New Matter-of-factness", "New Resignation", "New Sobriety", and "New Dispassion". The art historian Dennis Crockett says there is no direct English translation, and breaks down the meaning in the original German:
Sachlichkeit should be understood by its root, Sache, meaning "thing", "fact", "subject", or "object." Sachlich could be best understood as "factual", "matter-of-fact", "impartial", "practical", or "precise"; Sachlichkeit is the noun form of the adjective/adverb and usually implies "matter-of-factness".[2]
In particular, Crockett argues against the view implied by the translation of "New Resignation", which he says is a popular misunderstanding of the attitude it describes. The idea that it conveys resignation comes from the notion that the age of great socialist revolutions was over and that the left-leaning intellectuals who were living in Germany at the time wanted to adapt themselves to the social order represented in the Weimar Republic. Crockett says the art of the Neue Sachlichkeit was meant to be more forward in political action than the modes of Expressionism it was turning against: "The Neue Sachlichkeit is Americanism, cult of the objective, the hard fact, the predilection for functional work, professional conscientiousness, and usefulness."[1]
Background
Leading up to World War I, much of the art world was under the influence of Futurism and Expressionism, both of which abandoned any sense of order or commitment to objectivity or tradition. Expressionism was in particular the dominant form of art in Germany, and it was represented in many different facets of public life—in dance, in theater, in painting, in architecture, in poetry, and in literature.
Expressionists abandoned nature and sought to express emotional experience, often centering their art around inner turmoil (angst), whether in reaction to the modern world, to alienation from society, or in the creation of personal identity. In concert with this evocation of angst and unease with bourgeois life, expressionists also echoed some of the same feelings of revolution as did Futurists. This is evidenced by a 1919 anthology of expressionist poetry titled Menschheitsdämmerung, which translates to “Twilight of Humanity”—meant to suggest that humanity was in a twilight; that there was an imminent demise of some old way of being and beneath it the urgings of a new dawning.[3]
Critics of expressionism came from many circles. From the left, a strong critique began with
Bertolt Brecht, a German dramatist, launched another early critique of expressionism, referring to it as constrained and superficial. Just as in politics Germany had a new parliament but lacked parliamentarians, he argued, in literature there was an expression of delight in ideas, but no new ideas, and in theater a "will to drama", but no real drama. His early plays, Baal and Trommeln in der Nacht (Drums in the Night) express repudiations of fashionable interest in Expressionism.
After the destruction of the war, more conservative critics gained force particularly in their critique of the style of expressionism. Throughout Europe a return to order in the arts resulted in neoclassical works by modernists such as Picasso and Stravinsky, and a turn away from abstraction by many artists, for example Matisse and Metzinger. The return to order was especially pervasive in Italy.
Because of travel restrictions, German artists in 1919–1922 had little knowledge of contemporary trends in French art; Henri Rousseau, who died in 1910, was the French painter whose influence was most apparent in the works of the New Objectivity.[4] However, some of the Germans found important inspiration in the pages of the Italian magazine Valori plastici, which featured photographs of recent paintings by Italian classical realists.[4]
Painting
Verists and classicists
Hartlaub first used the term in 1923 in a letter he sent to colleagues describing an exhibition he was planning.[5] In his subsequent article, "Introduction to 'New Objectivity': German Painting since Expressionism", Hartlaub explained,
what we are displaying here is distinguished by the—in itself purely external—characteristics of the objectivity with which the artists express themselves.[6]
The New Objectivity was composed of two tendencies which Hartlaub characterized in terms of a left and right wing: on the left were the verists, who "tear the objective form of the world of contemporary facts and represent current experience in its tempo and fevered temperature"; and on the right the classicists, who "search more for the object of timeless ability to embody the external laws of existence in the artistic sphere".[6]
The verists' vehement form of realism emphasized the ugly and sordid.[7] Their art was raw, provocative, and harshly satirical. George Grosz and Otto Dix are considered the most important of the verists.[8] The verists developed Dada's abandonment of any pictorial rules or artistic language into a “satirical hyperrealism”, as termed by Raoul Hausmann, and of which the best known examples are the graphical works and photo-montages of John Heartfield. Use of collage in these works became a compositional principle to blend reality and art, as if to suggest that to record the facts of reality was to go beyond the most simple appearances of things.[3] Artists such as Grosz, Dix, Georg Scholz, and Rudolf Schlichter painted satirical scenes that often depicted a madness behind what was happening, depicting the participants as cartoon-like. When painting portraits, they gave emphasis to particular features or objects that were seen as distinctive aspects of the person depicted.
Other verists, like Christian Schad, depicted reality with a clinical precision, which suggested both an empirical detachment and intimate knowledge of the subject. Schad's paintings are characterized by "an artistic perception so sharp that it seems to cut beneath the skin", according to the art critic Wieland Schmied.[9] Often, psychological elements were introduced in his work, which suggested an underlying unconscious reality.
Max Beckmann, who is sometimes called an expressionist although he never considered himself part of any movement,[10] was considered by Hartlaub to be a verist[11] and the most important artist of Neue Sachlichkeit.[12]
Compared to the verists, the classicists more clearly exemplify the "return to order" that arose in the arts throughout Europe. The classicists included
The classicists are best understood by
Regional groups
Most of the artists of the New Objectivity did not travel widely, and stylistic tendencies were related to geography. While the classicists were based mostly in Munich, the verists worked mainly in Berlin (Grosz, Dix, Schlichter, and Schad); Dresden (Dix, Hans Grundig, Wilhelm Lachnit and others); and Karlsruhe (Karl Hubbuch, Georg Scholz, and Wilhelm Schnarrenberger).[11] The works of the Karlsruhe artists emphasize a hard, precise style of drawing, as in Hubbuch's watercolor The Cologne Swimmer (1923).[16]
In Cologne, a constructivist group led by Franz Wilhelm Seiwert and Heinrich Hoerle also included Gerd Arntz. Also from Cologne was Anton Räderscheidt, who after a brief constructivist phase became influenced by Antonio Donghi and the metaphysical artists.
Artists active in Hanover, such as Grethe Jürgens, Hans Mertens, Ernst Thoms, and Erich Wegner, depicted provincial subject matter with an often lyrical style.[17]
Franz Radziwill, who painted ominous landscapes, lived in relative isolation in Dangast, a small coastal town.[18] Carl Grossberg became a painter after studying architecture in Aachen and Darmstadt and is noted for his clinical rendering of industrial technology.[19]
Photography
Architecture
New Objectivity in architecture, as in painting and literature, describes German work of the transitional years of the early 1920s in the
Film
In film, New Objectivity reached its high point around 1929. As a cinematic style, it translated into realistic settings, straightforward camerawork and editing, a tendency to examine inanimate objects as a way to interpret characters and events, a lack of overt emotionalism, and social themes.
The director most associated with the movement is
Literature
The primary characteristic of New Objective literature was its political perspective on reality.[22] It renders dystopias, in a non-sentimental, emotionless reporting style, with precision of detail and veneration for "the fact". The works were seen to provide a rejection to humanism, a refusal to play the game of art as utopia, a negation of art as escapism, and a palpable cynicism about humanity.[23] Authors associated with New Objectivity literature included Alfred Döblin, Hans Fallada, Irmgard Keun, Erich Kästner, and, in Afrikaans literature, Abraham Jonker, the father of poet Ingrid Jonker.
Theater
Bertolt Brecht, from his opposition to the focus on the individual in expressionist art, began a collaborative method to play production, starting with his Man Equals Man project.[24] This approach to theater-craft began to be known as "Brechtian" and the collective of writers and actors who he worked with are known as the "Brechtian collective".
Music
New Objectivity in music, as in the visual arts, rejected the sentimentality of late
Legacy
The New Objectivity movement is usually considered to have ended with the
The influence of New Objectivity outside of Germany can be seen in the work of artists like Balthus, Salvador Dalí (in such early works as his Portrait of Luis Buñuel of 1924),[27] Auguste Herbin, Maruja Mallo, Cagnaccio di San Pietro, Grant Wood, Adamson-Eric, and Juhan Muks.
Notes
- ^ a b c Crockett p. 1
- ^ Crockett, p. xix
- ^ a b c Midgley 2000, p. 15
- ^ a b Crockett p. 15
- ^ Roh et al. 1997, p. 285
- ^ a b Kaes et al. 1994, p. 492
- ^ Michalsky 1994, p. 20
- ^ Michalsky 1994, p. 27
- ^ Schmied 1978, p. 19
- ^ Schmied 1978, pp. 23–24
- ^ a b c Schmied 1978, p. 10
- ^ Michalsky 1994, p. 147
- ^ Schmied 1978, p. 11
- ^ Schmied 1978, p. 9
- ^ Zamora and Faris 1995
- ^ Michalski 1994, pp. 90, 96
- ^ Michalski 1994, pp. 135–136
- ^ Michalski 1994, p. 153
- ^ Michalski 1994, p. 169
- ^ Michalski 1994, pp. 181, 188
- ^ "Karl Blossfeldt". Art Gallery NSW. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
- ^ Stoehr 2001, p. 99
- ^ Beaumont 2010, p. 151
- ^ Midgley 2000, p. 16
- ^ Albright 2004, p. 278
- ^ Schmied 1978, p. 31
- ^ Roh et al. 1997, p. 291
See also
- History of Painting
- Western Painting
References
- Albright, Daniel, ed. (2004). Modernism and Music: an anthology of sources. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-01267-0
- Becker, Sabina (2000). Neue Sachlichkeit. Köln: Böhlau. Print.
- Beaumont, M. (2010). A concise companion to realism. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 1444332074
- ISBN 0271017961
- Grüttemeier, Ralf; Beekman, Klaus; Rebel, Ben, eds. (2013). Neue Sachlichkeit and Avant-Garde. Avant-Garde Critical Studies 29. Amsterdam / New York: Rodopi.
- Kaes, Anton; Jay, Martin; Dimendberg, Edward, eds (1994). The Weimar Republic Sourcebook. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520067754
- Lethen, Helmut (1970). Neue Sachlichkeit 1924-1932: Studien zur Literatur des "Weissen Sozialismus." Stuttgart: Metzler.
- Lindner, Martin (1994). Leben in der Krise. Zeitromane der neuen Sachlichkeit und die intellektuelle Mentalität der klassischen Moderne. Stuttgart: Metzler.
- Michalski, Sergiusz (1994). New Objectivity. Cologne: Benedikt Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-9650-0
- Midgley, David (2000). Writing Weimar: Critical Realism in German Literature, 1918-1933. Durham and London: Oxford University Press.
- Roh, Franz, Juan Manuel Bonet, Miguel Blesa De La Parra, and Martin Chirino (1997). Realismo mágico: Franz Roh y la pintura europea 1917-1936 : [exposición] Ivam Centre Julio Gonzalez, [Valencia], 19 junio - 31 agosto 1997 : Fundación Caja de Madrid, Madrid, 17 septiembre - 9 noviembre 1997 : Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, [Gran Canaria], 2 diciembre 1997 - 1 febrero 1998. Valencia: Ivam, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern. OCLC 38962637(Spanish and English)
- Schmied, Wieland (1978). Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties. London: Arts Council of Great Britain. ISBN 0-7287-0184-7
- Stoehr, Ingo R. (2001). German Literature of the Twentieth Century: From Aestheticism to Postmodernism. Rochester, NY: Camden House. ISBN 1571131574
- ISBN 0-306-80724-6)
- Zamora, Lois Parkinson and Faris, Wendy B., eds. (1995). Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
External links
- Fritz Schmalenbach essay
- Tate modern definition
- Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) Image Library
- Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. October 1, 2010 – January 9, 2011.
- Table of Contents book Neue Sachlichkeit and Avant-Garde. Amsterdam / New York 2013. Brill/Rodopi
- The Essence of Magic Realism - Critical Study of the origins and development of Magic Realism in art.