Prints and drawings of the Weimar Republic, Germany 1918-1933
RMIT Gallery, Storey Hall, 344 Swanston St, City until March 1
Art Gallery of South Australia, March 14-April 27
Queensland Art Gallery, June 4-July 20
Percy Tucker Gallery, Townsville, August 9-September 21.
Review by Mike Heaney
MELBOURNE — Germany in the "roaring '20s" is probably best remembered by the Hollywood film Cabaret. But for a view of this period in Germany on a more than superficial level, through the eyes of its realist artists, this exhibition is a must see.
Showing the works of George Grosz, Kathe Kollwitz, Otto Dix, Karl Rossing and many others, the current tour is the most comprehensive display of its kind for several decades. The style of these artists is enhanced by the minimal use of line to a devastating effect. A simple outline of a figure in a complicated scene is enough to evoke an image that is meant to shock and disturb. These artists produce their work as a weapon; to awaken the viewer to what is happening in society; to take sides.
The methods used include linocut, lithograph, etching, watercolour (in Grosz's work), and woodcut (in Karl Rossing's The Press Photographer at the Execution). Grosz — probably the best known of the radical artists from this period — has the largest collection on show with more than 30 paintings and drawings. The economic and moral collapse of the middle class is a strong theme in his work.
In Suburb, a supposedly normal middle-class street scene is, on closer inspection, full of murder, waste and deprivation. All around you in Grosz's world the old empire has collapsed and capitalism is on a nose dive. Commenting on his radical approach in art Grosz wrote: "Expressionist anarchism must cease. Nowadays, painters are forced to indulge in it, because they have no relation to the working man. But the time will come when the artist is no longer just a bohemian, a woolly anarchist, but a clear, healthy worker in a collectivist society."
Karl Hubbuch's He Can't Afford It Any More (1925), shows a pathetic scene of a middle-class man sitting in the middle of his wants and going crazy for lack of them. Kollwitz's Bread (1924), a harrowing scene of children hanging off their mother's skirt pleading for food, is the most famous work in the exhibition.
Gerd Arntz's depiction of factory life comes out with the use of woodcut and black and white to full effect. His simple line drawings therefore stand out and appear to make the picture bigger than it really is. Like many of his drawings Occupying the Factory (1931) is a side shot of factory floors. In this case groups of armed workers arrest the employer and take over the factory while outside another cuts the telephone wires. In the bottom corner a worker's child paints a hammer and sickle on the factory wall. Arntz's works are always scenes of action and drama. This is art with a punch.