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New Objectivity and Magic Realism

( Beginning 1925 )

In 1925 an exhibition titled Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) was organised. More than
130 works by 32 artists were shown. For this event the journalist Franz Roh devoted an
article titled Magischer Realismus ("Magic Realism"). These terms are referring to the less
expressive aspects of the main trends in German painting between the wars. New Objectivity
and Magic Realism is also seen as countermovement, opposition to abstraction.
The main characteristic of New Objectivity and Magic Realism is the representation of
domestic indoors or scenes of every day life expressed in an unreal dimension. The main
protagonists in Germany are Max Beckman, Conrad Felixmuller, Georges Grosz, Otto Dix,
Christian Schad.
The first of these terms groups together imitators of Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Baldung
Grien and Albrecht Durer, who depicted people and things with a cold and striking precision.
The second encompassed the various heirs to the early Expressionist movements and such
old masters as Matthias Grunewald - they painted greed, lust, rage, brutality, spinelessness
and cowardice, showing what they considered to be a "true" portrait of man.
Max Beckmann, a painter, and Grosz, a newspaper caricaturist and erstwhile Dadaist, were
the most illustrious representatives of this group. When painted by them, priests, well-to-do
middle-class capitalists, judges and military figures all became much more than mere
caricatures. Dix had a place all his own, seeming to waver between the two branches of the
New Objectivity, and in some instances to reconcile them. A precise and painstaking painter,
he did not shrink from Expressionist distortions, at times making use of a technique imbued
with fury and hatred.

New Objectivity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The New Objectivity, or neue Sachlichkeit (new matter-of-factness), was an art

movement which arose in Germany during the 1920s as an outgrowth of, and in opposition
to, expressionism. The term is applied to works of pictorial art, literature, music, and
architecture. The end of New Objectivity came at the end of the Weimar Republic as the
National Socialists under Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933.
The New Objectivity is similar to neoclassicism, and compared to expressionism, realism.
Painters include George Grosz and Otto Dix, Christian Schad, and Max Beckmann.
Composer Paul Hindemith may be considered both a New Objectivist and an expressionist,
depending on the composition, throughout the 1920s.
Gustav Hartlaub coined the term in 1923 in his article "Introduction to 'New Objectivity':
German Painting since Expressionism," intended to prepare the audience of an exhibit of art
in the new movement. In the article, Hartlaub explained, “what we are displaying here is
distinguished by the--in itself purely external--characteristics of the objectivity with which the
artists express themselves." He identified two groups: the Verists, who "tear the objective
form of the world of contemporary facts and projects current experience in its tempo and
fevered temperature;" and the Magical Realists, who "search more for the object of timeless
ability to embody the external laws of existence in the artistic sphere.”
In architecture as in painting and literature, New Objectivity describes German work of the
transitional years of the early 1920s in the Weimar culture. In particular, it describes the
stripped-down, simplified building style of the Bauhaus, the urban planning and public
housing projects of Bruno Taut and Ernst May like the Weissenhof settlement, and the
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industrialization of the household typified by the Frankfurt kitchen. An architect's job, they
believed, was not to create a building that was beautiful for beauty's sake. Beauty would be
inherent in a building designed to function efficiently.

Die Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) was a pseudo-Expressionist movement

founded in Germany in the aftermath of World War I by Otto Dix and George Grosz. It is
characterized by a realistic style combined with a cynical, socially critical philosophical
stance. Many of the artists were anti-war.

Two major trends were identified under Neue Sachlichkeit. The so-called Verists, including
Otto Dix and George Grosz, aggressively attacked and satirized the evils of society and those
in power and demonstrated in harsh terms the devastating effects of World War I and the
economic climate upon individuals. Max Beckmann was connected with these artists.

A second term, Magic Realists, has been applied to diverse artists, including Heinrich Maria
Davringhausen, Alexander Kanoldt, Christian Schad, and Georg Schrimpf, whose works were
said to counteract in a positive fashion the aggression and subjectivity of German
Expressionist art.

Other artists associated with the movement included Max Beckmann and Christian Schad.

Die Neue Sachlichkeit/The New Objectivity as a movement is still questioned by some art
historians, just as the literary counterpart is questioned by some literary scholars. Its
characteristics are as follows:

1. A new and intentional fidelity to the outlines of the objects, which contrasts in
particular with the mobile, expansive, generalizing manner of the Expressionists.
2. Visual sobriety and acuity, an unsentimental, largely emotionless way of seeing.

3. Concentration on everyday things, on banal, insignificant and unpretentious subjects,

betraying no aversion for what is "ugly."

4. Isolation of the object from any contextual relationship, thus calling its identity into
question.

5. Static pictorial structure, often suggesting a positively airless, glassy space, and a
general preference for the static over the dynamic.

6. Manifest construction of a picture out of heterogeneous details which form no organic

whole (the collage-like assemblage of "particles of experience" suggests no
experiential connection, is confirmed by no unified perspective, and is illuminated by
no single light source).

7. Eradication of the traces of the process of painting, and elimination of all gestural
elements which might betray the hand of the individual painter.

8. New mental relationship with the world of objects.

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Comparison with Expressionism:

EXPRESSIONISM NEW OBJECTIVITY

Ecstatic subjects Sober Subjects

Suppression of the object The object clarified

Rhythmical Representational

Extravagant Puristically severe

Dynamic Static

Loud Quiet

Summary Thorough

Close-up view Close and far views

Monumental Miniature

Warm Cold

Thick Thin paint surfaces

Emphasis on seeing painting process Effacement of painting process

Expressive deformation External purification of object

"You know, if one paints someone's portrait, one should not know him if possible. No
knowledge! I do not want to know him at all, I only want to see what is there, on the
outside. The inner follows by itself. It is mirrored in the visible." - Otto Dix
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"The Strongest Expression Of Our Time - New Objectivity / Neue Sachlichkeit in

Hanover"
2001-12-09 until 2002-03-10
Sprengel Museum
Hannover, , DE

The time has come to re-evaluate the Hanover artists of the New Objectivity movement,
who, until now, have been examined from an entirely local perspective. They should be
placed in a wider context and with the insights recent research provide.

The Strongest Expression Of Our Time were the words Grethe Jürgens used in 1932 to
characterise the simple clarity with which social commentary appeared as images of workers,
average people and those who had lost their social positions in Hanover of the mid-1920s.
Several artists born around 1900, including Friedrich Busack, Grethe Jürgens, Hans Mertens,
Gerta Overbeck, Karl Rüter, Ernst Thoms and Erich Wegner, formed a loose group of artists
in the provincial capital. It has been more than a quarter of a century since the last
extensive exhibition of these works was mounted (at the Kunstverein Hannover). This would
suffice as a reason to re-examine the most significant pieces from a 21st century perspective
and to compare them with images by their contemporaries such as Dix, Grosz, Radziwill, and
Schad. The Strongest Expression Of Our Time show will encompass more than 300 oil
paintings and works on paper.

The unique elements of the Hanover group have rarely been examined. Abstraction,
Constructivism and Merz were strong influences on these artists. This expresses a tendency
away from the post- expressionism of the early 1920s towards clear repesentationalism that
is different from developments in other centres of New Objectivity, such as Munich,
Karlsruhe, Cologne, Berlin and Dresden.

The exhibition will not only include familiar works; recent acquisitions by the Sprengel
Museum Hannover will be shown as well, including previously unknown pieces. Additional
works come from more than 50 private collections, much of which has not been previously
available to the public. The catalogue (in addition to the documentation in the show)
provides thorough research as well as art historical and theoretical essays by significant
experts, full of new insights into what is a complex phenomenon.

Another important aspect of the exhibition is the convenient myth of a watershed in 1933.
New Objectivity, in Hanover and further afield, was not always branded as Degenerate Art;
on the contrary, it was celebrated as the New German Romanticism. Many painters included
in this movement, and not only Hanover artists (such as Adolf Wissel and Bernhard Dörries),
exhibited extensively during the Nazi period in the 1930s. Other representatives also
participated in exhibitions during this period and Thoms and Rüter were even in the
infamous Great German Art exhibition in Munich. The question here is: to what extent were
New Objectivity and Nazi painting the same or differentNULL These issues have not been
discussed in the context of Hanover, or they were carefully kept secrets. New insights into
these works can be found by evaluating them in both a historical and cultural manner.
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DIE NEUE SACHLICHKEIT

By Anna Glazova

The Term of the Neue Sachlichkeit

The term of the Neue Sachlichkeit is not an unproblematic one. While many artistic groups
and movements represented in the Weimar Republic can be more or less definitely
segregated within the larger context of the art development, the concept of the New
Objectivity (probably, the most appropriate translation of die Sachlichkeit) remains much
more open to interpretations. Hans Arp's and El Lissitzky's collection of art-"isms" makes
sense as far as it is true, that artists of different Weimar Republic groups (as the Dadaists,
the Expressionists, the Constructivists) had (despite their common inner conflicts) a certain
artistic program in common. Even if manifestos, techniques and particular topics varied from
one personality to another they still were united by the idea, what should be changed in the
conception of art and artist and how this particular movement could perform these changes.
Furthermore, members of these groups mostly used either to work or to exhibit together,
arranging group public events (such as Dadaist performative poetry readings, Constructivist
journals etc.). Jost Hermand points out: "While Expressionism and Dadaism are still generally
recognized as 'movements' today, 'Neue Sachlichkeit', however strongly it might have been
proclaimed at the time, was never really viewed as one. It remained an incomplete concept."
(1, p. 167) The artists of the New Objectivity tended to work much more individually, and
this was a consequence of the new concept of their role in the society. Hermand wrote: "In
contrast to Expressionism, at the heart of which had lain many bourgeois artists' illusion that
they could radically transform the world by means of art, 'Sachlichkeit' primarily signifies
resignation." (1, p. 167) Thus, it is difficult to speak about the New Objectivity as a
movement, because its representatives abandoned the former attempt to make the society
better with their works and, on the contrary, chose the path of serving the society. Although
Wieland Schmied claims, that "[the goal of the Neue Sachlichkeit] begins with the banal
everyday objects which surround us, but it aims at a reinterpretation of the world" (2, p.15),
for me Hermand's argumentation sounds more reasonable: "'Sachlichkeit' is the order of the
day - that is to say, sobriety, realism and good living, and with all the coldness of that stark
status quo mentality which for ever lies at the heart of this sort of compromise with the grim
reality." (1, p. 168)
The new artist would be someone who was able not only to design a whole book by himself
(1)
, or possessed a number of technical skills (this concept still can be compared to the
Constructivist view of an artist as a Constructor), but could also manage variable business
matters. Especially in the field of the journalism photography and advertising, the
concurrence emerged as a new factor, since "[e]ven the painters and poets suddenly wanted
to become factual reporters, newspaper correspondents or editors, each seeking merely to
express the 'pulse of the times' beyond all notion of art as something having an aura." (1, p.
168) Nevertheless, it would be an exaggeration to see in the New Objectivity only "the
attempt to maintain a system based on ownership, power, and control of mass
consciousness." (3, p. 67) On one hand, there was Gustav Hartlaub, who wrote in 1928: "All
art is advertising," and claimed that the art of today had no other goal except "to be neither
more nor less than art for the moment", to reflect the change in "the mood of the times." On
the other hand, there were George Grozs, John Heartfield and Wieland Herzfelde, who, not
conventionally for the New Objectivists, wrote a critical essay "Art is in Danger", and
mentioned two possibilities for a contemporary artist in it: Either to concentrate on
technology, or on the "service of the class war." Hermand made an interesting observation:
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The Neue Sachlichkeit was somehow politically confused, it was inspired with the Soviet
Communism and with the American Fordism at the same time. Even John Heartfield's
pseudonym showed his sympathy to America, but it did not disturb Heartfield to work
together and even to write artistic programs with George Grozs, a Communist. Hermand
insisted, that the ideological contradiction could co-exist in the frame of the Neue
Sachlichkeit, because it "remained a hybrid both politically and culturally. Because of its
paradoxical qualities, it clearly demonstrates the contradictions inevitable in a purely
commercial democratization." (3, p. 64)
I think, the artists of the New Objectivity, especially those in the advertising art and the
photographers, were driven, together with the rest of the society, by forces of booming
mass-media; therefore it is not quite correct to blame them as "profoundly undemocratic" (3,
p. 67), on the basis of the sole fact that Nazis found it possible to use that art in their
propaganda. It is clear that Hitler employed the same forces that gave the New Objectivity
its specific form. But to say that the objective photography could be labeled «pro-fascist»
would be similar to saying that the invention of television was an attack upon democracy.
Adorno claims in the Kulturkritik that one can write no more poetry in German after
Auschwitz; in 1949 Paul Celan writes a poem entitled the Todesfuge about being in
Auschwitz. The arts march hand in hand with the society; they cannot make politics neither
better nor worse.

The New Typography and New Advertising

Wieland Schmied names several characteristics of the Neue Sachlichkeit in paintings; the
most important of them are "concentration on everyday things, [...] betraying no aversion
from what is 'ugly'", "isolation of the object from any contextual relationship", "static pictorial
structure, often suggesting a positively airless, glassy space", and "manifest construction of a
picture out of heterogeneous details which form no organic whole". Many of them can be
applied to the New Photography as well: The concentration on everyday things is valid both
for Hans Mertens' still lives and for Moholy-Nagy's photographs and photograms; the
isolation of the object can be illustrated with the micro-photographs by Renger-Patzsch;
Moholy's photograph of the Funkturm in Berlin shows it from an unusual viewpoint, the
spectator finds himself hovering in the air and looking down the tower, so that he sees only
a fragment of it, not the organic whole, and the percepted image is distorted. As a
counterpart for the 'bird's eye views' Moholy uses the 'turtle's eye views' which create no less
disturbing impressions.
Herbert Molderings respond to the Renger-Patzsch's book of photographs under the original
title of "Die Dinge" (by the way, Dinge is a synonym for Sachen) with the following: "its
purpose was to recapture an aesthetic experience of the everyday surroundings, based on
the recognition of a single formal principle common to natural and man-made objects." (4, p.
91) For Ute Eskildsen, his visions are "almost metaphysical", "an extension of our vision and
understanding because with its help we are able to perceive aspects of the natural world
which are inaccessible to the naked eye." (5, p. 103) The same new vision, that re-creates
the world on the picture and teaches us to appreciate the way things ( Sachen) are
structured and arranged in the natureor in our everyday life, Wieland Schmied finds in the
paintings by Räderscheidt, Hoerle, Völker, Nerlinger, Viegener, Kanoldt, Mertens. It is
interesting, that the new photographers seem to have had the common aims and topics with
those of the painters, but, as Renger-Patzsch puts it, "with the means peculiar to
photography and without borrowing from art". Until then, the photography was a 'salon fine
art.'
Among the Neue Sachlichkeit photography Eskildsen considers the photojournalism, as
represented in a number of magazines (such as Köllnische Illustrierte, Weltspiegel etc.) The
new technique invented by these journalists was to portray the motif in motion, not a
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stationery one, as it was usual for studio photographs. "The 'New Photographer' had to have
a nose for the unusual since novelty was what was demanded in the bourgeois press:
'behind the scenes' items - [...] 'Ladies only', photographs taken secretly in court - are some
typical examples." (5, p. 108)
In the advertising, "the Neue Sachlichkeit photography drew attention to the medium itself
by discovering unfamiliar aspects in familiar objects". (5, p. 106) The 'new vision' proved to
be extremely profitable: Even a photograph of a fork, which was not meant to be a
commercial, could be successfully used as such. Maud Lavin examined the work of the new
advertising designers, der neuen werbegestalter, and stated that "[t]hey were negotiating
meaning and representation within several major areas: capitalist advertising, mass
communication and, for some, leftist activism." (6, p.41) This spectrum of application shows
that the Neue Sachlichkeit was directly connected with the development of mass media and
(depending on the latter) mass culture. The techniques of the Neue Sachlichkeit proved to
be virtual in the areas where the desired effect was the widest penetration into and
perception by the audience: in commercials and propaganda.

Conclusion
In the Neue Sachlichkeit the art movements of the Weimar Republic seem to have found a
logical conclusion: In a peculiar way, the Neue Sachlichkeit summarizes the Bauhaus
aspiration to the applied art, the Expressionists' woodcut experiments toward the mass
production, the Constructivists' fascination with the structure, the Dadaist obsession with the
machine. The art, once elitist and far from being socially engaged, became an instument of
the society, its merchandizer (advertising) and merchadize (such as the Illustrierten).
Wieland Schmied wrote: "Expressionism had reached for the stars: artists now wanted to
feel the firm ground under their feet." (2, p. 7) Maud Lavin cites an advertisement for
Eukotol Skin Cream in Münchener Illustrierte Presse, no. 5, 31 January 1932, made by an
unknown designer. The advertisement demonstrates two worlds, the macrocosm and the
microcosm (the footnotes give the explanations of the both foreign words), and a woman
between them. The advertising text tells that the skin separates the macro- from the
microcosm. The border between stars and a human is Eukotol, the commodity, the object of
artist's and consumer's interest.

The works cited

1. Hermand, Jost. "Unity within diversity? The history of the concept 'Neue
Sachlichkeit'", trans. Peter and Margaret Lincoln. Culture and Society in the Weimar
Republic, ed. Keith Bullivant. Manchester: Manchester University Press; Totowa, N.J.:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1977.
2. Schmied, Wieland. Neue Sachlichkeit and the German Realism of the Twenties, trans.
David Britt and Frank Whitford. Neue Sachlichkeit und magischer Realismus in
Deutschland. 1918-1933, Hannover: Fackelträger-Verlag, 1969.
3. Hermand, Jost. "Neue Sachlichkeit: Ideology, Lifestyle, or Artistic Movement?" trans.
Stephen Brockmann. Dancing on the Volcano: Essays on the Culture of the Weimar
Republic, ed. Thomas W. Kniesche and Stephen Brockmann. Columbia: Camden
House, 1994.
4. Molderings, Herbert. "Urbanism and Technological Utopianism Thoughts on the
Photography of Neue Sachlichkeit and Bauhaus". Germany: The New Photography
1927-1933, ed. David Mellor, London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978.
5. Eskildsen, Ute. "Photography and the Neue Sachlichkeit Movement." Germany: The
New Photography 1927-1933, ed. David Mellor, London: Arts Council of Great Britain,
1978.
6. Lavin, Maud. "Photomontage, Mass Culture, and Modernity." Montage and modern
life, 1919-1942, ed. Matthew Teitelbaum, Cambridge: MIT Press; Boston: Institute of
Contemporary Art, 1992.