Last weekend we went to the Nelson. We
stayed in the old building because it feels like every time we go
there we go to the new building. Joey wanted to look at the Egyptian
art, so we did.
Eventually we went to the exhibit, “WWI
and the Rise of Modernism.” The exhibit is split into (roughly)
thirds: before the war (featuring the rise of Cubism,
art-photographers such as Stieglitz, and Italian Futurism), during
the way (focusing on artists who served and/or died in the war), and
after the war, when, according to the exhibit, modernism split into
surrealism/Dadaism and Bauhaus, which focused on design and
architecture.
Here's the first paragraph of what the
pamphlet of the exhibit says about “after the war”:
Europe was a
different place after the war. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian
and Ottoman Empires had collapsed. New countries were born, and
national boundaries were redrawn. More than 15 million war deaths
left whole countries grieving and impoverished. Germany faced
punishing war reparations. In 1921, Adolf Hitler, a decorated veteran
of World War I, assumed leadership of the National Socialist German
Workers' Party, and in
1933 he became the chancellor of Germany. The
stage was set for World War II.El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites With the Red Wedge, 1919, lithograph |
What's missing here, and in fact what
was missing in the whole exhibit, was mention that this was a period
of great political, social and yes, artistic revolution in Europe,
particularly in Russia and Germany. Even granting that we're not up
to Weimar yet, the Russian Revolution took place in 1917, the German Revolution in 1919, and the entire period through the early 1920s was a time of great artistic experimentation.
There particularly is no mention of expressly
political art, of which there was a lot during this time. The only
piece that references revolution is a drawing of a revolutionary
shooting a rifle with the body of a capitalist draped over his
foxhole. There was a lot of really interesting political print in the
period, for example, which the exhibit didn't reference at all, but
which is as much “modernism” as Dada is.
Of course, expressly political art is
frowned upon in America, where abstraction is considered art and political art
isn't. Not only are a whole era's political
developments unmentioned, but the art that accompanied it is purged
from art history. And Americans remain ignorant of history, and
stunted in their politics.
R' Moti, I agree with you wholeheartedly. In Art, Music, and Literature, the interwar period was a burgeoning time of experimentation and joy, before economics and political tragedy ended it. It was more than just "Cabaret" and Picasso. And the Jews were heavily represented, as well.
ReplyDeleteR' Moti, I agree with you wholeheartedly. In Art, Music, and Literature, the interwar period was a burgeoning time of experimentation and joy, before economics and political tragedy ended it. It was more than just "Cabaret" and Picasso. And the Jews were heavily represented, as well.
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