Viewing the current exhibit, Berlin Metropolis, at the Neue Galerie can be a frustrating experience. For one thing, there is not enough space to easily view all the artwork on display. Since only the third floor and one room on the second floor of this former townhouse have been given over to the exhibit, works are crowded together and placed on the walls one over the other even in the third floor hallway and in the tiny closet that opens off it. One has to crane one's neck to see the full array, and even then a viewer must have excellent eyesight to make out the details in those pieces hung nearest the ceiling. More important is the lack of documentation. Tiny cards placed beside the artwork contain only minimal information. For example, on the second floor there is a series of a dozen intriguing photographs taken at night with available light. A single card explains that these show the exterior of the Capitol Theater in Berlin and were taken by a photographer named Venneman. Why the photographs were taken and how they relate to the other architectural studies shown in the same gallery is never explained. Nor is any information given regarding the photographer, other than his name, or the equipment he used.
A good deal of the exhibit is devoted to cinema. There are a large number of movie posters and film stills, and one can view on small screens Fritz Lang's two great masterpieces, Metropolis and M, while on the second floor an entire wall is has been set aside for the screening of Berlin: Symphony of the Metropolis, the 1927 experimental film directed by Walter Ruttmann (who later was assistant to Leni Riefenstahl and died in 1941 while working as a war photographer). In addition, there are a number of evocative drawings showing set and costume designs for Metropolis, though the names of the designers themselves are nowhere provided.
Two walls of the second floor gallery are given over to architectural drawings that portray the modernist vision of what Berlin might one day have looked like. These include studies for Erich Mendelsohn’s Einsteinturm (Einstein Tower) in Potsdam and Hans Poelzig’s interior design for the Grosse Schauspielhaus (Great Theater) as well as photographs of the Berlin-Britz complex and the Siemensstadt housing estate. The most compelling - and the one that most clearly shows the influence of the Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus aesthetic - is easily Mies van der Rohe's plan for a skyscraper on the Friedrichstrasse, a huge charcoal and graphite drawing on brown paper.
There are a number of works shown by major artists and a summary of these is given on the museum's website:
"Herbert Bayer, The Lonely Metropolitan (1932), Max Beckmann, Film Studio (1933); George Grosz, Metropolis (1917); Raoul Hausmann, Dada Triumphs (The Exacting Brain of a Bourgeois Calls Forth a World Movement) (1920); Ludwig Meidner, I and the City (1913); Lily Reich, Collage (1930); Rudolf Schlichter, Blind Power (1937), Georg Scholz, Of Things to Come (1922), as well as major works by John Heartfield and Hannah Höch."
Unfortunately, these are never put in context. No attempt is made to explain the relationships and the differences that existed among the major schools - Expressionism, the Neue Sachlichkeit, Dadaism - to which these artists belonged. Instead the show is divided into five parts: The Birth of the Republic; A New Utopia; The "Neue Frau," or New Woman; The Crisis of Modernity; and Into the Abyss. These themes are vague enough to begin with and are never meaningfully developed into a cohesive whole. It would have been much better, I think, to have divided the show by the art movements represented and then to have shown the attempts to synthesize these widely divergent styles during the Weimar era.
There are many important works missing from this show and no reference is made to them. It's hard to imagine anyone attempting an exhibit with this title and not including Otto Dix's masterpiece, the Metropolis triptych. But this is only the most glaring example. Among the photographers, for instance, there are no works shown by August Sander, Lotte Jaocbi or Yva, all of whom helped define the aesthetics of the period in their work.
In conclusion, there are many important works to be seen at this exhibit, some of them rarely displayed, and it definitely is worth taking the time to see them. The real problem here, though, is that this is simply too large a theme for so intimate a venue. The Weimar era was a cultural watershed that did much to define the style and outlook of the twentieth century. I would be much more interested in seeing a major museum with more resources available to it stage a large scale show that was better able to do justice to its subject.
Those seeking a better idea of the artistic ferment that occurred in Berlin during the 1920's would do well to refer to Before the Deluge by Otto Friedrich, a fascinating and comprehensive study that's also extremely readable. Copies are probably available in the Neue Galerie's bookstore, though I've never taken the time to look for it myself.
The exhibit continues through January 4, 2016.
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