“SPLENDOR AND MISERY”: THE LEOPOLD MUSEUM PRESENTS THE FIRST COMPREHENSIVE EXHIBITION ON GERMAN NEW OBJECTIVITY IN AUSTRIA
27.05.2024
The exhibition shows the cool, objective way in which German artists from the 1920s and 30s captured the zeitgeist and daily life of their time.
From 24th May, the Leopold Museum presents the first comprehensive overview exhibition of New Objectivity in Germany – the country where this term first emerged some 100 years ago. The exhibition Splendor and Misery. New Objectivity in Germany shines the spotlight on art created in the style of New Objectivity and Magical Realism by means of around 150 exhibits from international museums and private collections. Approximately 100 paintings and 40 works on paper by 47 artists, complemented with archival material and photographs, afford comprehensive insights into the art production of the time.
New Objectivity
The movement’s term goes back to the exhibition, organized in 1925 by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub at the Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim, called Die Neue Sachlichkeit. Deutsche Malerei seit dem Expressionismus [New Objectivity. German Painting since Expressionism]. This new movement provided a stark contrast to the introspective expressive style that dominated art prior to World War I.
“The traumatic and abysmal experiences of World War I called for entirely new depictions of reality in art. The resignation, accusations and indescribable hardships that characterized this time on the one hand, and the hope, emancipation and emerging zest for life of the ‘Golden Twenties’ on the other, needed to be expressed in a new type of art: one that was unsentimental, sober, concrete and purist; in short, one that was objective and realistic.”
Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum and curator of the exhibition
Left-Wing Verism and Right-Wing Tranquility
The expressive gestures of Expressionism, whose individualist model was no longer able to document the realities of the intellectual and political crisis situation, were replaced with a precise, sober and descriptive way of capturing daily life. Within the movement of New Objectivity, there were two different directions: a politically oriented left wing, characterized by a Verism critical of society, and a right wing, shaped by Classicist and neo-romantic tendencies.
“In the beginning, the art of New Objectivity was shaped by progressive artists on the political left who translated their pacifist ideas into their art, capturing an image of humanity that provided an eloquent testament to the tensions of the time. They denounced the double standards of society prevalent especially in modern cities, and rendered them visible in at times drastic depictions. Their artistic field of enquiry was the public sphere – the streets and squares, the inns and brothels, the factories and backyards. With caustic polemics, they leveled criticism at the debauchery of the bourgeoisie and at the capitalists who they believed exploited the population and profited from the War.”
Hans-Peter Wipplinger in the exhibition catalogue
The Sober Perspective
The artists of New Objectivity, including Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Carl Grossberg, George Grosz, Karl Hofer, Karl Hubbuch, Grethe Jürgens, Alexander Kanoldt, Lotte Laserstein, Jeanne Mammen, Felix Nussbaum, Gerta Overbeck, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Schrimpf and many others, viewed the events of the time from a sober perspective, capturing what they saw in an unemotional and unfiltered manner on canvas and paper. Looking for ways to process the horrific experiences of war and its devastating fallout, they found the themes for their works on the streets of the metropolis, at the cities’ entertainment venues, in the new life plans pursued by confident, modern women and in the radical changes brought about by rapid technological advancements. When the National Socialists seized power in 1933, this new artistic approach came to an abrupt end. In keeping with the National Socialists’ art policy, the art of the avant-garde was systematically defamed as “degenerate”, and works were seized or destroyed. Politically suspect artists had to endure random searches of their apartments and studios, were excluded from associations and faced exhibition bans. Professors, like Otto Dix and Christian Schad, were dismissed. Those affected reacted by fleeing abroad, retreating into an inner emigration, or by aligning themselves with the regime.
“Living on the Edge” as an Intense Exhibition Experience
Divided into 13 thematic areas, the exhibition focuses on a crucial chapter in German art production of the 1920s and 30s. It shines the spotlight on all the facets of the period known as the “Golden Twenties”, a term symbolizing the splendor and hedonism of the time. The exponents of New Objectivity revealed the glamorous and negative sides of the era’s nightlife in a socio-critical, sarcastic and unsparingly voyeuristic manner, and depicted the highly dangerous “dance on the volcano” of people living on the edge. Another focus was on showing people that were threatened in their very existence and pushed to the fringe of society.
From Emancipated Women to Still Lifes in the Style of the Old Masters
The exhibition further explores the emancipation of women, whose appearance changed drastically. Numerous portraits show confident, autonomous women who knew how to take advantage of their new opportunities and freedoms. The exponents of New Objectivity deemed people from all strata of society and of different professions worthy of being portrayed in realistic portraits. The representatives of the Classicist and neo-Romantic direction within New Objectivity propagated a retreat into the private and idyllic sphere as well as a return to simplicity, creating idealized environments in the technique of the Old Masters. The genre of still lifes, which was of eminent importance in New Objectivity, is also addressed in the exhibition, with the unrelatedness of the objects placed into the pictorial space meant to express feelings of existential emptiness and isolation.
Parallel Worlds, Fairytale-Like Idylls and the Beginning of the End
The artists’ view of the parallel worlds of the circus, cabaret and funfairs features in the exhibition alongside the ostensibly fairytale-like and idyllic depictions of Magical Realism, which on closer inspection convey an uneasy-apocalyptic atmosphere. Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor in 1933 heralded the beginning of the end of a liberal development of art. The widespread terror against dissidents escalated, and the Weimar Republic ended. Those painters of New Objectivity who espoused a socio-critical Verism were dismissed from their posts, and either left the country or retreated to the countryside. The defamatory exhibition Entartete Kunst [Degenerate Art] opened in Munich in 1937. Featuring 650 exhibits, seized from German museums, the aim of the presentation was to mock art and artists who the National Socialists regarded as “un-German”.
One of Many
The majority of painters shown in the exhibition at the Leopold Museum were on the list of “degenerate artists”. The Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum suffered a fate which is representative of the many lives that were systematically eradicated by the henchmen of National Socialism. Jewish artists were categorically excluded from exhibitions, and subsequently deported and murdered. Well aware what his return to Germany from a stay abroad in 1934 might mean for him, Felix Nussbaum remained in exile and tried to survive in Belgium. From the 1940s, he showed the inhumane terror of the holocaust in apocalyptic paintings, thus documenting the horrors of the time in an emphatic manner. In 1944, Nussbaum and his wife Felka Platek were discovered in hiding in Brussels. After their arrest, they were deported to the National Socialist extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where both of them were murdered.
CATALOGUE ACCOMPANYING THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue in German and English, edited by Hans-Peter Wipplinger, with essays by Daniela Gregori, Rainer Metzger, Aline Marion Steinwender, Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Thomas Zaunschirm, as well as an overview of culture, politics and society in the Weimar Republic from 1918 to 1933.
Curator: Hans-Peter Wipplinger
Detailed press information and high-resolution press images
Photos of the exhibition opening in the APA photo gallery
Splendid Exhibition Opening
The invitation to attend the opening of the exhibition, extended by the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger, was followed by a large number of guests. Attending the celebrations – in the presence of the Leopold Museum board members Josef Ostermayer and Saskia Leopold as well as the Leopold Museum’s Commercial Director Moritz Stipsicz – were the German ambassador Vito Cecere and his wife Bettina Bundszus-Cecere, the director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim Johan Holten, Inge Herold (deputy director Kunsthalle Mannheim), Thomas Schauerte (director Museen der Stadt Aschaffenburg), Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (director general for international cultural affairs of the Federal Ministry of European and International Affairs, BMEIA), Michael Lysander Fremuth (scientific director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Vienna), Aline Marion Steinwender (curator, Leopold Museum), investment banker Peter Goldscheider, Helene von Damm (former US ambassador) and Karl Regensburger (artistic director of ImPulsTanz), Werner and Hermine Muhm, art historians Fritz Koreny, Dieter Ronte and Thomas Zaunschirm, Jakob Jelinek and Jürgen Pölzl (committee Salon Leopold), the collectors Thomas and Andrea Röder, Carl-Ludwig Thiele, Erich and Monika Breinsberg, Helmut Klewan, Diethard Leopold, Waltraud Leopold and Werner Trenker, attorney Clemens Schindler (Schindler Attorneys), Christoph Spiegelfeld (Spiegelfeld & Wohlgemuth), Melanie Schernthaner (MedUni Vienna), Katharina Koren (Mars Austria), artist Peter Kogler, Bernd Ernsting (LETTER Stiftung), entrepreneurs Hyo-Sook Clara Song and Jieun An (World Culture Networks), investment manager Viktor Weinstein, business consultant Thomas Knoblinger (Arthur D. Little), manager Alexander Flatz (Sandorn), Pascal Molina (C-Quadrat Investment Group), Fanny Zerz (head of exhibitor relations, viennacontemporary), Max Appel-Palma (VIP relations viennacontemporary), Sophie Höfer (Galerie bei der Albertina Zetter), Stephanie Manz-Varga (LLB), Nina Wöss (Fund F), Cosima Paumgartner (Parfums Christian Dior), Sophie Weissensteiner (Sotheby’s Vienna), manager Weronika Pilus, Johannes Weber (KPMG), Sascha Worrich (Wienerroither & Kohlbacher), Špela Stramšek (Galeria Novak, Ljubljana), Ulrike Gießner-Bogner (OeAD-GmbH), journalists Eva Maria Klinger, Sabine Oppolzer (ORF Ö1), Hans-Peter Schwanke (Kunstmarkt.com), and many others.
Share and follow