The Provocation of Art that is Seen and Not Read: Herwarth Walden's Appropriation of the Tauentzien Girls

As editor of Der Sturm, the most innovative art review of the 1910s, Herwarth Walden became known for promoting abstraction. But he developed his ideas on modern art while editing periodicals of the theater industry, and his engagement with performance art shaped his approach to visual art. This essay considers how Walden's satirical response to a moralizing crusade against unchaperoned schoolgirls frequenting a posh shopping street drew on his ideal of art defined not by abstraction but manifestation: the superficial expression of inner spirit in material form.