“Objectivity” is obviously wrong. Most of the work demonstrated a manically heightened subjectivity.
But whatever label you choose, the exhibit made a case for a move, among some Weimar artists, away from the (arguably) private, inward-oriented explorations of expressionism and abstraction, towards (arguably) accessible, publicly-oriented forms of expression rooted in realism. But it was not a nostalgic, backwards-looking realism they developed, but realisms that were satirical, eerie, confrontational, and anti-decorative to the point of being polemically ugly.
Take Otto Dix’s The Jeweler Karl Krall (1927). For me, the really fascinating thing is that this was not a caricature of someone glimpsed through a shop window à la George Grosz, but a portrait commissioned the subject. Herr Krall asked Dix to do this, and presumably collaborated with him to create this particular pose. We obviously have only the vaguest sense of the daringness of Weimar culture, when Otto Dix could make a living painting portraits that rendered the subjects cretins, goons (The Businessman Max Roesberg, Dresden, 1922) or lunatics (The Lawyer Hugo Simons, 1925) playing with their fingers.
The Christian Schad is another good example. His paintings are crisp, bright and clear. His Self-Portrait with Model (1927) remains an unproblematic delight for about five seconds, after which the questions start to accumulate (What in the world is his shirt made of? What’s that scar running down the side of the model’s face? Is she dead? Are these two even in the same room?). In a different vein, his Agosta, The Pigeon-Chested Man and Rasha, the Black Dove (1929) is a magnificent grand machine, and yet it offers a cool tenderness, if ... you can bear to look. The cheerful guy in the foreground of his Portrait of Dr Haustein (1928) is literally haunted by a specter. After these acid baths, it’s hard to take the presumably direct Boys in Love (1929) at face value (the one's scary hands, for instance.).
After these harrowing encounters with the people, it’s no surprise that my favorite part of the exhibit was the still lives. Seriously, it was the one room all the work in different media really responded to each other, and seemed related. I loved that there were bizarre but clear sub-themes of cacti, rubber plants, and light bulbs running throughout the room.
Georg Scholz was my personal discovery of the exhibit. His Cacti and Semaphore (1923) was the most delightful picture. There were some other nice things, but I have a suspicion my pleasure was irrelevant.
I assume it was Stephanie Barron’s polemical point to present the work without a lot of historical context, so that it might have a chance of being seen and evaluated for what it is. A brave and not totally irresponsible move: individual works were the opposite of esoteric or obscure.
However there’s no avoiding the 800-pound gorilla in the gallery—namely the fact that for lack of a stable economy, all these articulate, publicly-focused, politically astute artworks were less than useless in postponing the Nazi nightmare one minute. It’s a relevant historical lesson that a period so rich in progressive culture turned overnight into its opposite.
In a break with LACMA tradition, there was no gift shop at the end of the exhibit. No commemorative knives, poison or bottled body parts?
[Top image: Georg Scholz, His Cacti and Semaphore (1923); Lower image: Rudolf Dischinger, Electric kettle (1931); Bottom image: Wanda von Debschitz-Kunowski, Sewing Machine (1930)]