The Visual Arts

Photo: Bauhaus Archiv Museum of Design, Berlin, Germany. Architect: Walter Gropius.

The Bauhaus

See also Bauhaus Archiv Museum of Design, Berlin, Germany. The Bauhaus Archive / Museum of Design in Berlin is concerned with the research and presentation of the history and impact of the Bauhaus (1919-1933), the most important school of architecture, design, and art of the 20th century.

It is the most complete existing collection focused on the history of the school and all aspects of its work and is accessible to all. The collection is housed in a building drafted by Walter Gropius, the founder of the school.

The immediate successor to the Bauhaus that was dissolved in 1933 under National Socialist pressure was The New Bauhaus, founded in Chicago in 1937 by La'szlo' Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). The New Bauhaus later became the School of Design, which in 1944 became the Institute of Design in Chicago.

Cover: Der Dada. Edited by Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, and George Grosz. 1919-1920.

See also Digital Dada Library: Original Dada-Era Publications in the International Dada Archive
(Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries)

Dadism During Weimar Republic

What is Dadism? According to Tristan Tzara in the “Dada Manifesto” [1918] and “Lecture on Dada” [1922]:

I am against systems, the most acceptable system is on principle to have none. To complete oneself, to perfect oneself in one's own littleness, to fill the vessel with one's individuality, to have the courage to fight for and against thought, the mystery of bread, the sudden burst of an infernal propeller into economic lilies.... Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family is Dada; a protest with the fists of its whole being engaged in destructivc action:

*Dada; knowledge of all the means rejected up until now by the shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good manners:

Dada; abolition of logic, which is the dance of those impotent to create:

Dada; of every social hierarchy and equation set up for the sake of values by our valets:

Dada; every object, all objects, sentiments, obscurities, apparitions and the precise clash of parallel lines are weapons for the fight:

Dada; abolition of memory:
Dada; abolition of archaeology:
Dada; abolition of prophets:
Dada; abolition of the future:
Dada; absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity:*

Dada; elegant and unprejudiced leap from a harmony to the other sphere; trajectory of a word tossed like a screeching phonograph record; to respect all individuals in their folly of the moment: whether it be serious, fearful, timid, ardent, vigorous, determined, enthusiastic; to divest one's church of every useless cumbersome accessory; to spit out disagreeable or amorous ideas like a luminous waterfall, or coddle them -with the extreme satisfaction that it doesn't matter in the least-with the same intensity in the thicket of one's soul-pure of insects for blood well-born, and gilded with bodies of archangels. Freedom:
Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.

Translated from the French by Robert Motherwell, *Dada Painters and Poets*, by Robert Motherwell, New York, pp. 78- 9, 81, 246-51; reprinted by permission of George Wittenborn, Inc., Publishers, 10l8 Madison Avenue, New York 21, N.Y.

Photo: Degenerate Art exhibit.

Degenerate Art, commentary by Dr. Stephen Feinstein, Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota.

Degenerate Art from A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust.

Entartete Kunst by Werner Hammerstingl.

Anthology Cover: Der Almanach "Der Blaue Reiter" (Blue Rider Almanac), München 1912. See the Web Museum-Paris' The Blue Rider virtual exhibit and the Walker Art Center's Franz Marc and the Blue Rider Exhibition.

Expressionism During the Weimar Republic

"We shall not paint the forest or the horse in the way we like them or according to their appearance to us, we shall paint them as they really are, how the forest or the horse perceive themselves, according to their absolute nature thriving behind the visible facade ... We have to learn from now on to relate the animals and plants to ourselves and to depict this relationship in Art."

(Franz Marc 1912/13 in Partsch 1993)

Painting: The Little Blue Horses (Die Kleinen Blauen Pferde), Franz Marc, 1911, oil on canvas, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.

Cover: Das Gesicht der herrschenden Klasse: 57 politische Zeichnungen. (The Face of the Dominant Class) by George Grosz, 3rd, expanded ed. Berlin: Malik Verlag, 1921.

Art As Social Criticism During the Weimar Republic

Artists Otto Dix, Kathe Kollwitz, and George Grosz did not hesitate to criticize the existing government and society. They intended to reach large audiences so most of their works were prints that were inexpensive to produce and distribute.

Photo: Friedl Dicker, artist.

Friedl Dicker was born into a Jewish family in 1898 in Vienna. In 1919-1923, she studied in Bauhaus, Weimar with Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Georg Muche. In 1944, she perished in Auschwitz.

Painting: Boy From Hitler's Youth, T. Rieger, Oil on canvas, 65,5 x 47 cm, 1941.

Nazi Approved Art from A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust

National Socialist Realism, Virtual Museum of Political Art, a private collection by MMag.Patrick Horvath and Dr.Werner Horvath. (Click and then select National Socialist Realism from left menu.)

Photo: Artworks that were confiscated and collected for Adolf Hitler, seen here examining art in a storage facility, were designated for a proposed Führermuseum in Linz, Austria.

Nazi Looted Art: The Holocaust Records Preservation Project, Part 1 By Anne Rothfeld; Fall 2002, Vol. 34, No. 3.

"Our primary goal is to aid archival research in looted cultural property records and to create specialized inventories and finding aids. Our finding aids allow researchers to narrow their search for archival records and also help to preserve the records by minimizing the amount of handling to which they are subjected. Two additional project goals are the posting of inventories and indexes on NARA's art provenance web page."

Holocaust-Era Assets