Art of the 20th Century. Dorothea Eimert

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      Magical Realism and the New Objectivity

      World War I radically changed Europe politically and socially, and revolutionised the general mood in Germany. In many large cities, councils of workers and soldiers were created. A state of near civil war prevailed. The writer, Eduard Trautner, described the situation during 1919 in Munich in the magazine, The Way:

      Specific questions of daily life, in particular, social problems came to the fore. ‘We want to change the world. We all want justice,’ wrote the poet René Schickele. ‘Radical’ became a magic word that was synonymous with truth, sincerity, and public spirit. The cultural conditions in Bavaria during the Soviet Republic of 1918–1919 differed from those in the rest of Germany only in as much as Prime Minister Kurt Eisner was in agreement with the artists. In contrast with Berlin, for example, the majority of the artists stood in unison with the cultural policies of those in power. After the Soviet Republic was put down in May 1919, all the members of the Aktionsausschusses revolutionärer Künstler München (Action Committee of the Revolutionary

      Artists of Munich) were arrested, including the painters, Georg Schrimpf and Hans Richter, as well as the writer, Oskar Maria Graf.

      In Berlin, as in Munich, also centre of the Revolution that was soon to fail, 120 artists met together at the end of 1918. They called themselves the Novembergruppe. The leaders of the group were among others César Klein, Max Pechstein, Moritz Melzer, and Georg Tappert. In their circular letter they wrote: ‘The future of art and the seriousness of the present situation force us of revolutionary spirit (Cubists, Futurists, Expressionists) into agreement and close alliance.’ Among the participants of the meetings and exhibitions were such renowned artists as Rudolf Bauer, the sculptor Rudolf Belling, Otto Freundlich, Richard Janthur and the architect, Erich Mendelsohn. Artists of the most varied artistic and ideological viewpoints joined. For example, from the Sturm, Walter Dexel, Oskar Fischer, Johannes Molzahn, Otto Möller, and Fritz Stuckenberg joined. Enrico Prampolini represented the Futurists in the Novembergruppe. The Dadaists Hans Arp, George Grosz, Hannah Höch, and Raoul Hausmann sympathised with the Novembergruppe. Kurt Schwitters exhibited jointly with them. Even artists who taught from 1919 onwards at the Bauhaus in Weimar are mentioned as participants during the time the Novembergruppe existed. These were Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Georg Muche, Oskar Schlemmer, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy.

      Towards the end of 1918, a whole row of artist groups had arisen: in Dresden, the Gruppe 1919; in Hamburg, the Hallische Künstlergrupe (Halle Artist Group) and the group Kräfte (Powers); in Magdeburg the Vereinigung für neue Kunst und Literatur (Association for New Art and Literature) and Die Kugel (The Sphere); in Düsseldorf, Das Junge Rheinland (the Young Rhineland); and in Karlsruhe, the Gruppe Rih (Rih Group). The art scene was a living mixture of artistic styles belonging to the object-oriented and abstract Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism.

      In the April 1920 issue of Der Ararat, Leopold Zahn drew attention to the fact that the Futurist Carlo Carrà was competing with Poussin for the sternest composition in their painting. In addition, Giorgio de Chirico was proudly declaring: ‘pictor classicus sum.’ The influence of the new Pittura Metafisica was great among the German artists. As has already been mentioned, Max Ernst created his series Fiat Modes; George Grosz painted his machine people set in an architectural wasteland around 1920 in the Diabolospieler. Even Georg Schrimpf, Gottfried Brockmann, Oskar Schlemmer, and many others could not deny this influence. Even Alexander Kanoldt, who worked in seclusion had, by 1914, already arrived at a similar style. Heinrich Maria Davringhausen had done so in 1917; George Schrimpf in 1918 – all three done so independently of one another. In Pittura Metafisica, they did not discover anything new, but rather something similar.

      The painters Georg Schrimpf, Alexander Kanoldt, Carlo Mense, and Heinrich Maria Davringhausen were the only painters in Munich to consistently follow the new Magical Realism and the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) styles. These four artists were regarded as the Münchner Gruppe der Neuen Sachlichkei. Already by the beginning of 1919, the gallery owner, Hans Goltz, had assumed the role of sole representative for this new style, just as he was also already representing George Grosz and Paul Klee.

      Christian Schad, Count Saint Genois d’Anneaucourt, 1927.

      Oil on panel, 103 × 80.5 cm. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

      Far removed from Futurism and Expressionism, a new interpretation of reality was being heralded by the young artists. These artists rediscovered visible reality that had been pushed into the background during the years of research and experiments. The need for order and security grew after the chaos of war and the threats to freedom and human existence. Everywhere, a new Realism came to the fore. For decades it had seemed that since the start of the modernist art at the end of the 19^th century, Realism in art was a closed chapter of the Romantic, landscape, and portrait painters. Only after the political and social collapse did the search begin anew for the real, the objective in a contemporary style.

      Heinrich Maria Davringhausen is counted as one of the trailblazers of Magical Realism and New Objectivity. In the Berlin and Munich of the 1920s, he was considered to be among the most shining artistic personalities. He was an elegant bohemian with great charisma and a pioneer of a new world of images. The critics found his ‘blasphemous impudence of spirit’ but at the same time also found that he had a ‘love for craftsman-like perfection.’ In 1920 he made use of a hard, clear style. Everything progressive and outdated is frozen in a stasis, as in the painting, The Black Marketeer. Davringhausen depicted the architectural environment, onto which the profiteer is placed, like a tiger getting ready to jump, with a quick and fleeting perspective. As if drawn with a ruler, it represses any personal style. In this painting, even more intensively than in the previous works, space and perspective perform an interpretive function. The ‘spatial psychology’ appearing again and again with Davringhausen is consciously used in symbolic form here. This was already recognised in 1925 by the author Franz Roh, somewhat later by Erwin Panofsky and recently by the art historian, Christoph Vögele. All the authors point to the parallels found in styles since the Gothic. From now on, the rather hurried perspective and the window view become the favourite vehicle in the works of Davringhausen to engage in psychoanalysis through a clear spatial location and conveying meaning through perspective. The view from the office of The Black Marketeer is one of smooth and cold high-rises. The windowless openings let the exterior space appear to be everywhere.

      Through these ‘holes,’ The Black Marketeer seems, like a spider, to be able to reach out and grab loot. However, he is also in danger of crashing down: The openings open themselves into dangerous shafts that lead into endless depths. (Vögele)

      Already by 1933, he had fled together with his Jewish wife from the Nazis. A large number of his paintings, all told around 222, were lost, burned, or were wantonly destroyed during the war. Twenty paintings were confiscated for being ‘degenerate.’

      In the summer of 1925, the director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, brought together 124 paintings from thirty-two artists for the legendary exhibition titled Neue Sachlichkeit. This exhibition visited several other German cities as well. СКАЧАТЬ