Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s

Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s, published to accompany an exhibit of the same name held at the Metropolitan Museum in 2006, has a very narrow focus - portraits painted in Germany during the brief heyday of the Weimar Republic in the style of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) school.  This approach is further limited by its inclusion of only Verist works painted by left wing artists such as Dix, Grosz and Beckmann.

The term Neue Sachlichkeit itself was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub to describe an exhibit he had planned in 1923 for the Mannheim Kunsthalle where he was then director.  The intent was to showcase post-expressionist German art, and it was Hartlaub himself who first provided the distinction between Classicists and Verists.

The differences between the radical Verists and the conservative, if not reactionary, Classicists have more to do with opposing world views than with artistic techniques. Following the end of World War I, Germany found itself in chaos.  Not only had seven million of its citizens been killed in action and millions more wounded and maimed, effectively wiping out an entire generation, but the country now found itself on the verge of economic and social collapse.  The Weimar Republic was at best a compromise that desperately attempted to hold off an armed confrontation between the left and right, both of which had been thoroughly radicalized by their country's devastating defeat.

The Classicists, promoting what they termed "Magic Realism," urged a return to order and turned a blind eye to the reality of their surroundings.  Their depictions of leading figures ended up unimaginative portrayals of upstanding citizens moving through a world that was still depicted as well organized and fully functional.  The Verists, on the other hand, did not blink when viewing the disruption about them and instead incorporated these horrors into their work.  With unbending ferocity, they painted (and drew) exactly as they saw them the maimed soldiers, corrupt politicians, cocaine addicts, prostitutes and sexual deviants.

Of the artists represented in Glitter and Doom perhaps the most important is Otto Dix.  Not coincidentally, he was the only one of the Verists to have served on the front lines for the entire duration of the war.  When it ended, no one was in a better position than he to acknowledge the full implications of its outcome.  Looking at Dix' work is akin to viewing illustrations of the cabaret world described so well by Isherwood in The Berlin Stories.  Even more fully than in his portraits, Dix uses the Metropolis Triptych (cartoon, 1928, plate 75) and the shocking watercolor The Dream of the Sadist I (1922, plate 82) to provide the viewer a window into the decadence of the period.

The volume features three well written essays of which "Faces of the Weimar Republic" by Ian Baruma is particularly recommended.  In addition, the catalog entries which accompany the excellent reproductions are detailed and provide biographical information for both the artists and their subjects as well as detailed analyses of the artworks themselves.

An interesting sequel to the Verist art movement was the Degenerate Art Exhibit held in Munich in 1937 in which many of the pieces shown in this book were displayed and ridiculed side by side with paintings by Matisse and Picasso.  Only recently, as reported in a BBC news article, has a list been published by London's Victoria and Albert Museum showing the final disposition of these artworks.  Many were destroyed by the Nazis although some, ironically, were rescued for his own collection by Goering, who well recognized their monetary value if not their artistic importance.