Strindberg and Van Gogh by Karl Jaspers (review)

166 Books turned away from the optimistic and passionate distortions of Futurism and Expressionism and the impassionate explorations of the cubists. This new sensibility, this new realism was a reaction to the devastating experience of World War I and was marked by a preoccupation with the elementary facts of real life, and it sought to come to terms with its own time [see Wieland Schmied's essay in the Hayward Gallery's catalogue Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties, 1978]. Willett's book is, despite its vast scope, not a history of Weimar culture as a whole; it tries to find out how the consolidation of the new movements came about and how they penetrated a whole society. There are two main themes: high civilization and its contrasting underlying menace. World War I had a very formative influence in almost every respect-it brought about geographical displacements, many artists shared the traumatic experience of military service and front-line action (and, it may be added, a good many died and were thus cut short in their development, August Macke being one of the more well-known examples), and the Russian Revolution was another source of hope and energy. Futurism ended, Dada was born, the cinema and the other media started a powerful development. Dada was, in a way, also a comment on the nonsense of war; other artistic forms found a target in sharp social criticism-such as the work of George Grosz. Willett also stresses the importance of the development of the arts in revolutionary Russia. He comments on Lunacharsky's promotion of innovative art and on the roles of Mayakovsky and Kandinsky within the context of the new cultural establishment. Also treated are the foundation of the Moscow Vkhutemas school and the birth of Constructivism, as symbolized in the Tatlin tower and the rise and reduction of Proletkult. One chapter is devoted to postwar Paris with its influx of foreigners (USAmericans and Russians) and the importance of Cocteau, Leger and Le Corbusier. A most influential and consequential feature was the spread of Russian Constructivism to Germany (notably to Berlin and Hannover) and the transformation of the Bauhaus-it abandoned Utopian Expressionism and pseudoreligion . All these developments are presented within their political and economical context, a network much too intertwined to be treated here at any length. The rise of the New Sobriety is also seen as a result of the relative prosperity and calm in Germany between 1924and 1929, which was also a reason for the rapid development of an urban culture in Berlin. In 1925 the Mannheim Kunsthalle staged an exhibition of pictures of 'tangible reality', and G. F. Hartlaub invented the term Neue Sachlichkeit to describe the new trend, a term that quickly caught on and is now part of the tradition. In 1925the Bauhaus moved to Dessau and an architecture department was founded under Hannes Meyer, whose role is worked out clearly, especially concerning his innovations and his preferencefor quantifiable structures. The development of architecture is traced, including such important projects as Weissenhofsiedlung , Torten, Bruno Taut at Zehlendorf and Ernst May's Bruchfeldstrasse at Frankfurt), and also comprising design (furniture, printing). Also mentioned are the burgeoning media, like photography, cinema (especially Russian and innovative films), 'theatre for the machine age' and music. The new idiom becomes vulgarized in the Art Deco style;the right-wing cultural reaction raised its ugly head and in 1929-1930 came 'the Crunch'. The political and economic changes put a stop to Weimar Germany's interlude of democracy. In the visual arts there is both a polarization and a decline, there was a spreading of the purge mentality both on the political Left and Right. Then there came the 'putting back of the clocks' with the steady slide into Nazism, following Bruning's decision to relyon government by decree. The Left failed to combine, German Communism was a 'closed world', the Nazis started their moves against 'cultural Bolshevism', Left writers suffered from punitive measures, the Prussian arts administration was demolished. For a time the Soviet Union was a hopeful alternative home for progressive artists-until the New Stalinist policy for a uniform culture based on Social Realism was...