Portraiture
In any art movement there are always various aspects given more attention or value than others whether it is concerning technique, mastery, subject matter, composition, or a particular medium. With Expressionism, there was a general reaction against and rejection of traditional training in the arts, and in its place a preoccupation with primitive non-European art of the East takes root. Parallel to that preoccupation, Expressionism envelops this secondary focus on the ever-developing relationship of individuals to the modern city, or metropolis, and the anonymity modernity provides. While Neue Sachlichkeit was very much in opposition to the subjective and visionary interpretations characteristic to Expressionism, the movement picked up on this secondary focus. Neue Sachlichkeit too sought to present the nature of their surroundings and the newfound freedoms provided by the city, but in a very different way[1].
Much like the journalist Joseph Roth, a contemporary of New Objectivity artists, unveils all-too-familiar characters in snippets of casual conversations overheard in various dives[2], most artists within this movement portrayed lesser known, if at all, social figures as “types” familiar to most urban residents of the Weimar Republic. This vessel of portrayal is largely none other than a re-thought, renovated style of portrait painting, which composes the bulk of art work within this movement. Meticulously painting the familiar, the recognizable characters of city life, artists also often portrayed themselves in different roles. As contemporary journalist Carl Einstein suggests that these artists:
…Grosz, Dix, and [Rudolf] Schlicter, demolish the real with pithy objectivity, unmask this era, and force it into self-irony. Painting, a medium of cool execution; observation an instrument of relentless attack.[3]
There is also an element of imaginative play and the ability of the artist to conceive a fantasy that is central to many self-portraits from this period. In particular, this paper will consider the works of three prominent artists associated with Neue Sachlichkeit, namely Otto Dix, Christian Schad, and George Grosz, and how they used portraiture to present societal norms.
Otto Dix had the talent of a Renaissance draftsman, and no doubt, artists such as Dürer, Grünewald, and others had an enormous influence on him.[4] The carefully wrought details in his highly finished and smooth oil paintings, such as the sheer blue drapery that appears to effortlessly engulf the model in his 1924 Self-Portrait with Muse, along with the usage of jewel-toned colors, such as the blues and reds in the aforementioned painting, bespeaks these artists of the past. However, his subject matter and treatment of it is anything but traditional. He often exaggerates features, employs unconventional views, and uses those same jewel tones to sharply draw attention to the sitter as is immediately evident in his 1926 Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden. His contemporary, Christian Schad, uses a more classicized frontal approach to portrait painting. Although he too creates finely detailed and finished oil paintings, there is much less energy and warmth. Compared to Dix’s 1924 Self-Portrait with Muse, Schad’s Self-Portrait with a Model, 1927, feels stiff and the viewer is made to feel almost uncomfortable by the coldness and tension generated by the staging of the subjects. Moreover, Schad’s subjects are often arranged more formally, arresting the viewer in a piercing gaze such as Dr. Haustein’s in his 1928 portrait. Finally, with Grosz, portraiture too becomes a widely used avenue for his portrayal of Weimar culture. His works, apart from Dix and especially Schad, have more of a loose quality as is seen in Self-Portrait with a Model, 1928. In his self-portrait, the viewer is uncomfortably forced to be the third person in the room. Grosz often creates a chalklike finish to his oil paintings, and the details are subtle, rather than explicitly finished. Essentially the unreserved details composing these and other portraits, however differently executed by Dix, Schad, and Grosz, convey types of the Weimar Republic and consequently provide a social dialogue, often of brutal criticism, that characterizes Neue Sachlichkeit.
A further look at the artists’ self-portraits helps to describe and place their own identity as an artist in this socially revolutionary climate. As is the case with all three chosen self-portraits, there is a nude model. Given the reduction in the male population after the war, both sexes were grappling with changing gender roles. In Dix’s self-portrait, his model appears garish and open unlike the stiff and calculating Dix in his heavy painterly robes. Her hand and hair seem to float up in imaginary waves of fantasy. This juxtaposition seems at once vulgar and luminuous. It is as if Dix steps into his serious painter mode, but seeks a separate reality with the muse. Schad’s nude model appears disappointed, cold, and distant as is represented by the single narcissus flower in the background separating Schad and his model. Emptiness pervades in what might have been or once was love. Unlike the previous nudes, Grosz’ looks unsuspecting and surprised. His self-portrait seems to share more lively qualities with that of Dix, but there is a menacing gaze coming from the artist. Viewed from afar his palette creates the illusion of a gory mutilation of the woman’s back. It is as if the viewer is made uncertain of the model’s fate in the hands of Grosz. All three artists create and attain to a specific role. Dix explains the rewarding experience of painting self-portraits as a discovery process of the “many sides to a person.”[5] Likewise, he places himself in the role of the rigid, painterly madman. Reflecting on his own Self-Portrait with a Model, Schad explains that “My pictures are never illustrative. If anything, they are symbolic.”[6] The painting is done in Vienna, but as he explains the setting is supposed to recall Paris. All three tap into an ability to stage something, create a scene that most likely never happened, or at least not for the purposes of painting as they work through their own gender roles.
Similarly, the subject of all three remaining portraits done by these artists is a prolific or recognizable figure in the Weimar Republic; the cynical poet Max Hermann-Neisse, the liberated woman Sylvia von Harden, and the successful Jewish Dr. Haustein. In view of all three portraits, none of these artists were attempting flattery, but instead to capture these personalities from the outside. [7] In his 1927 painting of The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse, Grosz highlights the inner turmoil by close attention to details such as his blue veins showing through his thin skin and the dark red lips pursed. In isolation from others, the deep poet suffers alone. In his 1926 Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden, Harden’s laidback and yet confident posture suggests the woman who has found herself, her identity, and is comfortable with this knowledge. By distorting her lanky hands and legs and using these slightly clashing tones of red, Dix outwardly presents an unusual personality. Schad, perhaps a little less confrontationally, captures the anxiety and wear of life in his 1928 Portrait of Dr. Haustein. Little identifies Dr. Haustein as a doctor, aside from the title and urethral probe hanging from his left pocket. However, there is a haunting specter that is certainly recognizable in his eyes and intensified by the creepy shadow cast behind him. All three characters in these portraits were everyday people worn by modernity and familiar to Weimar culture in this way. Thus one can see the progression of and identification with societal norms as artists Otto Dix, Christian Schad, and George Grosz work through portraiture.
[1] Selle, O. Carol. Discovering German Realism: An Enthusiast’s Perspective. Pg. 6
[2] Roth, Joseph, Nights in Dives, trans. by Michael Hoffman, Neue Berliner Zeitung (February 1921)
[3] Einstein, Carl. ”Otto Dix.” Das Kunstblatt 7, no. 3 (March 1923), 97.
[4] Karcher, Eva. Dix. (Germany: Taschen, 2002). 151
[5] Karcher, Eva. Dix. 79
[6] Schad, Christian. Christian Schad and the Neue Sachlichkeit, exh. Cat. (New York:W.W Norton & Company, 2003), 229.
[7] Sabine, Rewald. Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006), 7.
Much like the journalist Joseph Roth, a contemporary of New Objectivity artists, unveils all-too-familiar characters in snippets of casual conversations overheard in various dives[2], most artists within this movement portrayed lesser known, if at all, social figures as “types” familiar to most urban residents of the Weimar Republic. This vessel of portrayal is largely none other than a re-thought, renovated style of portrait painting, which composes the bulk of art work within this movement. Meticulously painting the familiar, the recognizable characters of city life, artists also often portrayed themselves in different roles. As contemporary journalist Carl Einstein suggests that these artists:
…Grosz, Dix, and [Rudolf] Schlicter, demolish the real with pithy objectivity, unmask this era, and force it into self-irony. Painting, a medium of cool execution; observation an instrument of relentless attack.[3]
There is also an element of imaginative play and the ability of the artist to conceive a fantasy that is central to many self-portraits from this period. In particular, this paper will consider the works of three prominent artists associated with Neue Sachlichkeit, namely Otto Dix, Christian Schad, and George Grosz, and how they used portraiture to present societal norms.
Otto Dix had the talent of a Renaissance draftsman, and no doubt, artists such as Dürer, Grünewald, and others had an enormous influence on him.[4] The carefully wrought details in his highly finished and smooth oil paintings, such as the sheer blue drapery that appears to effortlessly engulf the model in his 1924 Self-Portrait with Muse, along with the usage of jewel-toned colors, such as the blues and reds in the aforementioned painting, bespeaks these artists of the past. However, his subject matter and treatment of it is anything but traditional. He often exaggerates features, employs unconventional views, and uses those same jewel tones to sharply draw attention to the sitter as is immediately evident in his 1926 Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden. His contemporary, Christian Schad, uses a more classicized frontal approach to portrait painting. Although he too creates finely detailed and finished oil paintings, there is much less energy and warmth. Compared to Dix’s 1924 Self-Portrait with Muse, Schad’s Self-Portrait with a Model, 1927, feels stiff and the viewer is made to feel almost uncomfortable by the coldness and tension generated by the staging of the subjects. Moreover, Schad’s subjects are often arranged more formally, arresting the viewer in a piercing gaze such as Dr. Haustein’s in his 1928 portrait. Finally, with Grosz, portraiture too becomes a widely used avenue for his portrayal of Weimar culture. His works, apart from Dix and especially Schad, have more of a loose quality as is seen in Self-Portrait with a Model, 1928. In his self-portrait, the viewer is uncomfortably forced to be the third person in the room. Grosz often creates a chalklike finish to his oil paintings, and the details are subtle, rather than explicitly finished. Essentially the unreserved details composing these and other portraits, however differently executed by Dix, Schad, and Grosz, convey types of the Weimar Republic and consequently provide a social dialogue, often of brutal criticism, that characterizes Neue Sachlichkeit.
A further look at the artists’ self-portraits helps to describe and place their own identity as an artist in this socially revolutionary climate. As is the case with all three chosen self-portraits, there is a nude model. Given the reduction in the male population after the war, both sexes were grappling with changing gender roles. In Dix’s self-portrait, his model appears garish and open unlike the stiff and calculating Dix in his heavy painterly robes. Her hand and hair seem to float up in imaginary waves of fantasy. This juxtaposition seems at once vulgar and luminuous. It is as if Dix steps into his serious painter mode, but seeks a separate reality with the muse. Schad’s nude model appears disappointed, cold, and distant as is represented by the single narcissus flower in the background separating Schad and his model. Emptiness pervades in what might have been or once was love. Unlike the previous nudes, Grosz’ looks unsuspecting and surprised. His self-portrait seems to share more lively qualities with that of Dix, but there is a menacing gaze coming from the artist. Viewed from afar his palette creates the illusion of a gory mutilation of the woman’s back. It is as if the viewer is made uncertain of the model’s fate in the hands of Grosz. All three artists create and attain to a specific role. Dix explains the rewarding experience of painting self-portraits as a discovery process of the “many sides to a person.”[5] Likewise, he places himself in the role of the rigid, painterly madman. Reflecting on his own Self-Portrait with a Model, Schad explains that “My pictures are never illustrative. If anything, they are symbolic.”[6] The painting is done in Vienna, but as he explains the setting is supposed to recall Paris. All three tap into an ability to stage something, create a scene that most likely never happened, or at least not for the purposes of painting as they work through their own gender roles.
Similarly, the subject of all three remaining portraits done by these artists is a prolific or recognizable figure in the Weimar Republic; the cynical poet Max Hermann-Neisse, the liberated woman Sylvia von Harden, and the successful Jewish Dr. Haustein. In view of all three portraits, none of these artists were attempting flattery, but instead to capture these personalities from the outside. [7] In his 1927 painting of The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse, Grosz highlights the inner turmoil by close attention to details such as his blue veins showing through his thin skin and the dark red lips pursed. In isolation from others, the deep poet suffers alone. In his 1926 Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden, Harden’s laidback and yet confident posture suggests the woman who has found herself, her identity, and is comfortable with this knowledge. By distorting her lanky hands and legs and using these slightly clashing tones of red, Dix outwardly presents an unusual personality. Schad, perhaps a little less confrontationally, captures the anxiety and wear of life in his 1928 Portrait of Dr. Haustein. Little identifies Dr. Haustein as a doctor, aside from the title and urethral probe hanging from his left pocket. However, there is a haunting specter that is certainly recognizable in his eyes and intensified by the creepy shadow cast behind him. All three characters in these portraits were everyday people worn by modernity and familiar to Weimar culture in this way. Thus one can see the progression of and identification with societal norms as artists Otto Dix, Christian Schad, and George Grosz work through portraiture.
[1] Selle, O. Carol. Discovering German Realism: An Enthusiast’s Perspective. Pg. 6
[2] Roth, Joseph, Nights in Dives, trans. by Michael Hoffman, Neue Berliner Zeitung (February 1921)
[3] Einstein, Carl. ”Otto Dix.” Das Kunstblatt 7, no. 3 (March 1923), 97.
[4] Karcher, Eva. Dix. (Germany: Taschen, 2002). 151
[5] Karcher, Eva. Dix. 79
[6] Schad, Christian. Christian Schad and the Neue Sachlichkeit, exh. Cat. (New York:W.W Norton & Company, 2003), 229.
[7] Sabine, Rewald. Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006), 7.